LeadCrafters

Author: luke@itwstudios.co.uk

  • No website? Can you still run Google Ads?

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    All articles Google Ads

    Do you need a website to run Google Ads?

    12 October 20266 min readLeadCrafters

    You have been told Google Ads will bring you work. You have also been told you need a website first, and that a website means money you would rather put into the van, plus a few weeks of back and forth you do not have time for. So the obvious question is whether you can just skip it and get the ads running.

    The short answer is no, not really — but it is a far smaller job than it sounds. Here is what Google actually requires, what you lose without a page, and the smallest thing that will do the job.

    Google needs somewhere to send the click

    Every search ad has a destination. When someone clicks your ad, Google sends them to a web address you have given it, and Google checks that address: it needs to load, it needs to work on a phone, and it needs to match what the ad promised. Ads pointing at nothing, at a broken link, or at a page that has no connection to the search get disapproved and stop running.

    That is the part people miss. Google is not being snobby about web design. The click has to land somewhere, and Google will not keep charging you for clicks that land nowhere useful.

    You can technically point an ad at a social media page, and some trades do. It is often allowed, but it is a poor destination: the person lands on a feed rather than an offer, nothing tells them which areas you cover, and the enquiry ends up buried in a message folder you check at nine at night. Google's requirements change from time to time too, so check the current destination rules in Google Ads Help before you build a campaign around them.

    What not having a page actually costs you

    Set aside the rules for a second. Here is what you are really giving up:

    • You cannot track what works. Conversion tracking is a small piece of code that sits on your page and tells Google "this click turned into a phone call or a form". Without it, Google is guessing which clicks are worth bidding on, and so are you. You end up paying for traffic with no idea which half of it was any good.
    • You have nowhere to prove you are any good. A search ad gives you a headline and a line or two of text. That is not enough to win a job. The page is where the before-and-after photos go, where your reviews go, where you say which towns you cover and how quickly you can get there.
    • You cannot answer the obvious questions. Do you do flats? Are you insured? Do you work weekends? Every unanswered question is a reason to go back to the search results and ring the next firm.
    • You do not control it. A page you own shows what you want. A social page shows whatever the platform decides to show next — sometimes your competitors.

    None of that is about looking fancy. It is about the twenty seconds after the click, which is where the enquiry is won or lost.

    The one page that is usually enough

    Here is the bit that should take the pressure off. You do not need a website. You need one page. For most trades running ads for one service in one area, a single page does the job:

    • What you do, named the way customers say it — "gutter cleaning in Stoke-on-Trent", not "exterior maintenance solutions"
    • The towns and areas you actually cover, written out in full
    • Your phone number at the top, as a tappable link, because most of this traffic is on a phone
    • A short form — name, number, postcode, what the job is. Nothing more
    • Six to ten of your own photos, including before and afters
    • A line on how you price, even if it is only "send me a photo and I'll give you a number the same day"
    • Your reviews, and your real business details

    That is it. No blog. No "about us" page with a stock photo of an office you do not have. No ten service pages you will never get round to finishing. One honest page, built in a day, that loads fast on a phone.

    If you advertise more than one service, you will eventually want a page for each, because the page should say back to people exactly what they searched for. But that is a problem for later, not a reason to put off starting.

    What about call ads and Local Services Ads?

    Two things usually come up here, and both are worth knowing about.

    Call ads make the phone ring rather than sending people to a site — the ad shows your number and the click starts a call. Good for urgent work. They do not remove the need for a page though: Google asks for a verification address, a web page showing the same number, so it can check the ad is really yours.

    Local Services Ads are a different product that sits above the normal search ads. They work from a verified business profile rather than a website, and you are vetted first. They only cover certain trades and areas, so check whether yours is eligible rather than assume either way.

    Before any of that: your Google Business Profile is free. If you have nothing at all, sort that out first and start asking customers for reviews. It works whether or not you ever spend a penny on ads.

    If you are not going to build a page, advertise somewhere else

    If you genuinely are not going to build a page — no time, no appetite, not now — then Facebook and Instagram ads are the better fit, because lead forms open inside the app. Someone taps your ad, a short form appears with their name and number already filled in, and the enquiry comes through to you. No website needed anywhere in that chain.

    The trade-off is intent. Somebody searching "blocked gutter" has a problem right now. Somebody scrolling Facebook on their lunch break was not looking for you at all. You can win work from both, but social enquiries usually need chasing harder and more of them go cold.

    When the answer is "not yet"

    A few situations where we would tell you to wait:

    • If building the page would eat your whole budget. Ads need steady spend over weeks to settle down and tell you anything. A page and three days of clicks is money gone for nothing. Have both covered, or wait.
    • If you cannot answer the phone during the day. Paid clicks are the most expensive leads you will ever buy. Letting them go to voicemail while you are up a ladder is the fastest way to decide advertising does not work.
    • If you do not know which job you want more of. "More work" is not something you can build a page or a campaign around. "More gutter clearing in these five postcodes" is.

    So, do you need one?

    You need somewhere for the click to land. That is the real requirement, and one good page meets it. It does not need to be a proper website and it does not need to be expensive — it needs to say what you do, where you do it and how to reach you, and it needs to work on a phone.

    If you have been putting off running Google Ads because you think you need a website first, the thing standing in your way is smaller than you think.

    Not sure what you actually need?

    Tell us the job you want more of and the areas you cover, and we will tell you straight whether ads are worth it yet. No pressure, no jargon.

    Book a free call Google Ads for trades
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  • Your Google listing is costing you jobs

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    All articles Leads and CRM

    Your Google listing is costing you jobs.

    5 October 20266 min readLeadCrafters

    Nearly every trade has a Google listing. Someone set it up years ago, or Google generated it from an old directory entry and you claimed it one wet afternoon. Then it sat there.

    That listing is what a customer sees when they search for a window cleaner, a plumber or a valeter near them. It is what shows in the map results, and what fills the side of the page when somebody types your business name in. It costs nothing to run, and it is almost always the part of a trade's online presence with the most obvious problems still sat in it.

    Here is what goes wrong most often, and what to do about it.

    The primary category is the wrong one

    Google lets you set one primary category and a handful of extras. The primary one carries the most weight in deciding which searches your listing can turn up for, so it wants to match the work you actually want more of, not the broadest thing you are capable of.

    A roof cleaner listed as "Roofing contractor" is sat in among firms fitting new roofs. A gutter and fascia man listed as "Cleaning service" is next to domestic cleaners doing kitchens. If the van earns its money on exterior cleaning, pick the category that says exterior cleaning, and put everything else in as secondary categories.

    Worth a look once a year, too. Google adds and renames categories, so a better fit than the one you picked in 2019 may exist now.

    The service area covers half of England

    It is tempting to tick every town within an hour's drive on the theory that more area means more enquiries. It does not work like that, and it has a real cost: you spend your evenings on calls for jobs that are not worth the diesel, and you read as a national operation rather than the local firm you are.

    Set the area to where you would genuinely turn out tomorrow morning. And if you have no shop or yard that customers visit, you can hide the street address and show a service area instead, which is worth knowing if you work from home and would rather not have the address on the internet.

    The business name has keywords jammed into it

    "Dave's Window Cleaning – Gutter Cleaning Stoke, Cheap Conservatory Roofs" is not a business name. Google's guidelines are clear that the name field should hold the name you actually trade under, the one on the van and the invoice.

    Listings that stuff it can be quietly edited back by Google, reported by a competitor, or in the worst case suspended. Getting a suspension lifted is a tedious few weeks, and you lose the listing while you wait. The services you offer belong in the categories and the services list instead. Those fields were built for it.

    The opening hours are fiction

    This comes in two versions. The first is hours nobody has touched since the day the listing was set up, so it says nine to five while you are answering the phone from seven. The second, and more common, is hours that say you are open at times you are up a ladder and cannot pick up.

    Set the hours to when you can realistically answer, and add bank holidays and the Christmas shutdown as special hours when they come round. Someone who rings a listing that says "open" and gets voicemail normally just rings the next one down the list. That is the cheapest job you will lose all week.

    There are no photos, or only the logo

    Photos are the one part of a listing a customer genuinely studies. A listing with your logo and nothing else tells them nothing. A listing with a dozen honest photos of finished work does most of your selling before the phone rings.

    Use your own, not stock. Before and after pairs of jobs you are proud of, the van, a shot of you on site. Add a few every month rather than uploading forty once and never going back. If keeping that up is the bit that never happens, it is exactly the sort of job worth handing over — it is what our Google Business Profile posting service exists to keep ticking over.

    Reviews: asked for badly, and never replied to

    Most trades know reviews matter and still leave them to chance, which means they arrive from the customers keen enough to go looking for the listing, and from the occasional unhappy one.

    Ask at the moment the customer is happiest, which is usually while they are stood on the drive looking at the clean roof, not three weeks later by text when they have forgotten your name. Make it one tap — the short review link from your profile, saved in your phone.

    Two things to avoid. Do not offer money, a discount or anything else in exchange for a review; Google's review policies prohibit it outright. And do not only ask the customers you are confident will be kind — Google takes a dim view of it, and a run of flawless reviews with nothing in between reads as managed rather than real.

    Then reply to all of them, the bad one included. Future customers read your reply far more carefully than they read the complaint. A calm, specific answer does you more good than the review did you harm.

    The services, description and website link nobody has touched

    Three fields that take twenty minutes between them and are usually blank.

    The services list should name the jobs you actually do, in the words a customer would use. The description is for a person reading it, not a keyword list, so write it the way you would explain the business to a neighbour. And the website link does not have to point at your home page — if you have a page about gutter cleaning, point it there.

    It gets set up once and never looked at

    A listing is not a form you fill in. Posts expire after a week or so. Photos go stale. Hours change. Questions get asked on the listing and sit there unanswered, sometimes answered wrongly by a member of the public.

    Ten minutes a fortnight covers it: a post, two photos, a glance at the questions and any new reviews. Put it in the diary on the same day you do your invoices and it actually happens.

    When this will not move the needle for you

    An honest note, because a Google listing is not the answer to everything.

    • If most of your work comes as a subcontractor for other trades, a listing does very little. Your time is better spent on those relationships.
    • If you cannot answer the phone during the day and have nobody who can, fix that first. Every bit of advertising you do, free or paid, leaks out of that hole.
    • If you are new in an area, you are listed alongside firms with years of reviews behind them. A tidy listing helps, but it will not jump that queue on its own, and paid search is usually the faster route in while the listing builds up.
    • If you are genuinely booked out for months, leave it. Come back when the diary thins.

    Where to start this week

    If you only do four things, do these:

    • Check your primary category is the work you want more of.
    • Tighten the service area to where you would really travel.
    • Fix the opening hours so they match when you answer.
    • Add six photos of real jobs, and reply to every review you have.

    None of it is complicated. It is just the kind of thing that never reaches the top of the list when you have been out on jobs since seven.

    Want the listing looked after for you?

    We work with one business per trade per area, so we either have room for you or we will say so. Book a free call and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth it.

    Book a free call Google Business Profile posting
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  • Half your clicks aren’t customers

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    All articles Google Ads

    Half your clicks aren't customers at all.

    28 September 20265 min readLeadCrafters

    If you run Google Ads for your window cleaning round, there is a good chance you are paying for clicks from people who were never going to book you.

    Not because the ads are bad. Because Google will happily show your advert to anyone whose search looks vaguely related to window cleaning — including the lad looking for a job, the homeowner trying to do it themselves, and the bloke down the road who wants to buy a round off you.

    Every one of those clicks costs you the same as a real enquiry. The fix is a negative keyword list, and it is one of the few jobs in an ads account you can do yourself in an evening.

    What a negative keyword actually does

    A normal keyword tells Google "show my advert when someone searches this". A negative keyword tells it the opposite: "if their search contains this word, do not show my advert at all".

    That is the whole idea. You are not changing your bids or rewriting your ads. You are drawing a line round the searches you never want to pay for.

    It matters most on broad and phrase match keywords, which is what most accounts are running. If you have "window cleaning" in there on broad match, Google decides what counts as close enough — and its idea of close enough is a lot wider than yours.

    Find the ones actually costing you money

    Before you copy anyone's list, look at your own account. In Google Ads, go to your campaign, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. That report shows the real searches people typed before clicking your advert, which is not the same as the keywords you added.

    Set the date range to the last three months so you have enough to see a pattern. Then read down the list. Anything that made you wince is a candidate.

    You can add negatives straight from that screen — tick the search term and choose to add it as a negative keyword. Do that little and often and the list builds itself.

    The list every window cleaner should start with

    These are the groups that come up again and again on exterior cleaning accounts. Add them as negatives and you cut out a big chunk of the rubbish before it ever costs you a click.

    People looking for work, not a cleaner:

    • jobs, job, vacancy, vacancies, hiring, recruitment
    • salary, wage, wages, pay, hourly rate, how much do window cleaners earn
    • apprenticeship, training, course, courses, qualification

    People planning to do it themselves:

    • how to, DIY, yourself, tips, guide, tutorial, youtube
    • homemade, vinegar, washing up liquid, best way to

    People buying kit or a business:

    • water fed pole, pole system, trolley, backpack, purifier, resin, DI vessel
    • equipment, supplies, wholesale, for sale, second hand, used, ebay
    • round for sale, business for sale, franchise, customers for sale

    Business services, not cleaning:

    • insurance, public liability, software, app, invoicing, CRM
    • leaflets, marketing, advertising, website, SEO

    Free and freebie searches:

    • free, cheap, cheapest, discount, voucher

    Be careful with that last group. "Cheap" is worth blocking on most rounds, but "free quote" is a perfectly good search. If you block "free" outright you lose those too, so block "free" only as a phrase you have actually seen wasting money, or block the specific term "free window cleaning" instead.

    Jobs you do not do:

    This one is personal to you. If you do not do commercial high rise, abseiling, cherry pickers, solar panels, oven cleaning or pressure washing driveways, add those words too. There is no point buying a click for work you will only turn down.

    Broad, phrase and exact — which to use

    Negative keywords have match types just like normal ones, and the default is a bit counter-intuitive.

    • Broad negative (just the word, no punctuation) blocks any search containing that word in any order. Best for the obvious ones: jobs, salary, DIY, ebay.
    • Phrase negative (in "quote marks") blocks searches containing that exact run of words. Good for things like "round for sale".
    • Exact negative (in [square brackets]) blocks only that search and nothing else. Use it when a word is risky on its own.

    When in doubt, start with phrase. Broad negatives are powerful and easy to over-apply.

    Where to put the list

    You can add negatives at campaign level or ad group level, and there are also shared negative keyword lists you can apply to several campaigns at once.

    For most one-van rounds, a single shared list applied to every campaign is plenty. Keep it in one place, add to it when you spot something, and you are not maintaining four copies of the same thing.

    Where ad group level earns its keep is when you are running separate ad groups for separate services — window cleaning, gutters, conservatory roofs. Then you can stop your gutter ad group showing for window cleaning searches and vice versa, so each advert matches what was actually typed. That is a bigger job than a negative list though, and it is really a campaign structure question.

    The ones people block by mistake

    Two warnings, because over-blocking is quieter and more expensive than under-blocking.

    First, watch out for words that appear in your own town or street names. Block "free" broadly and you can knock out searches from anywhere with "free" inside a place name. It is rare, but it happens.

    Second, do not block your own service words in a panic. Plenty of people search "window cleaning prices" or "window cleaning cost" and they are genuine customers doing their homework before they ring round. Those are not time-wasters, they are people at the shopping stage.

    After any big change to a negative list, check your impressions a week later. If they have fallen off a cliff, you have blocked something you needed.

    When negatives will not fix your problem

    Worth being straight about this. Negative keywords stop you paying for the wrong people. They do not make the right people ring you.

    If your search terms report is already clean and you are still not getting work, the problem is further down the line — the advert, the page they land on, what happens when they do get in touch. Tidying negatives will not touch any of that.

    And if you are spending very little each month, the honest answer is that a negative list might save you a couple of clicks and no more. It is worth an hour of your time either way, but do not expect it to transform a budget that was always going to be tight.

    A simple routine

    Add the starter list above. Then, once a week for the first month, open the search terms report, read the last seven days, and add anything daft. After that, once a month is fine.

    It takes ten minutes and it is the single easiest way to stop your budget leaking. Every click you stop paying for is budget left over for someone who actually wants their windows done.

    Not sure what your budget is buying?

    We only work with one window cleaner per area. If yours is still free, we will take a look at your account and tell you straight what we would change.

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  • Why your Facebook posts get no enquiries

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    Why your Facebook posts get no enquiries.

    21 September 20266 min readLeadCrafters

    You finish a job you are proud of. You take a photo, put it on your business page, and by teatime it has a handful of likes and a "looks great mate" from your brother-in-law. The phone does not ring. Next week you do it again, with the same result, and after a month or two you start to wonder whether Facebook is worth bothering with at all.

    It is a common story, and it is rarely because your work is not good enough. Most of the time the post is being shown to the wrong people, it is not asking anyone to do anything, or both. The good news is that most of it is fixable in the ten minutes you already spend posting.

    The people seeing your posts are mostly not customers

    When you post on your business page, Facebook does not show it to everyone in your town. It shows it to some of the people who already follow your page, and it tends to favour the posts those people react to. Look at who follows a typical trade's page and you usually find friends, family, old school mates, other trades and a few past customers.

    Those people are lovely, and their likes are not worthless, but very few of them need a roof cleaned, a boiler serviced or a car valeted this week. The person who does need it has probably never heard of you and does not follow your page, so your post never reaches them.

    That is the single biggest reason posts get likes but no enquiries. The likes come from people who know you. The work has to come from people who do not.

    A like is not an enquiry

    Liking a post costs nothing and takes half a second. Sending a message asking for a quote is a much bigger step. Someone only takes it when three things line up: they have the problem now, they believe you can fix it, and it is obvious how to get in touch.

    A post can look brilliant and still miss all three. A nice photo of a clean driveway tells people you do good work. It does not tell them you cover their village, that you have space next week, or that they can message you for a price without any fuss.

    Most posts do not ask for anything

    "Another one done today" is the most common trade post on Facebook, and it gives a potential customer nothing to act on. Compare it with something like "Mossy roof in Hanley, cleared and treated in a day. We have a couple of slots free next week. Message us a photo of your roof for a price."

    The second version is not salesy. It just answers the questions a customer has in their head. A post that brings in enquiries usually includes:

    • Where the job was. Naming the town or area tells local people you work near them.
    • The problem it solved. Moss, a blocked gutter, a stained carpet, a dog-hair-filled estate car. People recognise their own problem before they recognise your skill.
    • A before and after. Taken from the same angle, in decent light, so the difference is obvious at a glance.
    • One clear next step. Message us, ring this number or fill in this form. Pick one, not three.
    • A reason to act now. Honest availability, such as "two slots left this month", works better than a made-up deadline.

    Posting in bursts looks like you have stopped trading

    Plenty of pages post five times in a week when things are quiet, then nothing for three months when the diary fills up. The trouble is that people often check your page after hearing your name from a neighbour or finding you on Google. If the last post is from the spring, some of them will assume you are too busy, have packed in, or are not that bothered.

    You do not need to post every day. A steady rhythm you can keep up, even once or twice a week, looks far more trustworthy than a flurry followed by silence.

    The photo is doing the wrong job

    Photos of the van, the kit or a half-finished job mean a lot to you and very little to a customer. Dark photos, blurry photos and wide shots where the work is a speck in the corner all get scrolled past.

    The picture should show the result the customer is paying for, close enough to see, and ideally next to what it looked like before. If you only change one habit this month, make it taking a proper "before" photo before you start.

    What regular posting is actually good for

    It is worth being honest here. Even a well-written post on your own page will mostly be seen by people who already know you. That makes regular posting a shop window rather than a lead machine. Its job is to reassure the people who come looking: that you are real, still trading, local and good at what you do.

    That job matters. A customer who finds you through a recommendation, a van sign or a Google search will often check your Facebook page before they get in touch, and a page full of recent, clear before-and-afters helps them make their mind up. If you would rather not spend your evenings writing posts, done-for-you social media posting keeps the page active without it eating into your time.

    When you need to reach people who do not follow you

    If you want Facebook to bring in work from strangers, that is what paid adverts are for. With an advert you choose the area, so the post is shown to homeowners within reach of your van rather than to your mates. You can also add a simple enquiry form, so someone can ask for a quote without leaving Facebook. The same rules apply as above: clear photo, named area, the problem solved and one next step.

    There is more to setting them up well than boosting a post and hoping, which is why we wrote a separate page on Facebook and Instagram adverts for trades.

    Adverts are not for everyone, though. They are probably not worth it yet if:

    • You are already fully booked from word of mouth and repeat customers.
    • You cannot reply to messages quickly. An enquiry that waits a day for an answer has often gone to someone else.
    • You have no photos of your own work to show yet. Get a few good jobs photographed first.

    A quick fix list for this week

    • Take a before photo on every job, from the spot you will take the after photo.
    • Name the area in every post.
    • Say what the problem was, in the words a customer would use.
    • End every post with one way to get in touch.
    • Pick a posting rhythm you can keep, and keep it through busy months as well as quiet ones.
    • Reply to every comment and message, including the "how much?" ones.

    None of this needs a marketing budget. It just means writing each post for the next customer rather than for the people who already know you. If you want your page to bring in work from beyond your followers, that is the point where paid adverts earn their keep.

    Want your page to bring in actual work?

    Book a free call and we will look at your page and your area with you, and tell you straight whether posting, adverts or neither is the right next step.

    Book a free call Social media posting
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  • What a roof cleaning lead really costs

    What a roof cleaning lead really costs

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    All articles Google Ads

    What a roof cleaning lead really costs.

    16 September 20266 min readLeadCrafters

    Three dark cards in a row labelled cost per click, cost per enquiry and cost per job, with the cost per job card highlighted in gold as the one that counts.

    "What's a roof cleaning lead going to cost me?" It is usually the first question a roofer or exterior cleaner asks, and it is a fair one. It is also the question nobody can answer honestly with a single number.

    Anyone who tells you a roof cleaning lead costs a fixed amount is either quoting someone else's account or selling you something. What we can do is show you how that cost is made up, and how to work out what a lead is worth to you.

    First, be clear what you mean by a "lead"

    Half the confusion in this conversation comes from three different things sharing one word. There are really three numbers, and they are not interchangeable:

    • Cost per click — what you pay when somebody taps your advert. Most of them will never contact you.
    • Cost per enquiry — what you pay for each person who actually rings, fills in the form or messages you. This is what most people mean by a lead.
    • Cost per job — what you pay in advertising for each enquiry that turns into money in the bank.

    The last one decides whether advertising is working for you. A cheap click means nothing if the phone never rings, and a cheap enquiry means nothing if it never books. When someone quotes you a cost per lead, ask which of the three they mean.

    Why the number moves around so much

    Roof cleaning is not one market. The cost of getting in front of someone changes with all of the following:

    • Where you work. A dense city with a dozen firms bidding on the same searches is a different market to a rural patch with two.
    • The time of year. Demand for roof and moss work is seasonal, and so is the competition for it.
    • The job itself. Somebody searching for moss removal on a terrace is not worth the same to you as somebody with a large detached roof wanting a full softwash.
    • How urgent it is. Urgent searches tend to be more expensive and also more likely to book.
    • Who else is bidding that week. This changes constantly and is outside anybody's control.
    • How good your advert and your page are. Two firms bidding the same money on the same search can end up paying very different amounts per enquiry.

    That last point is worth sitting with. A large part of your cost per lead is not set by the market. It is set by how your advertising is put together and how you handle what comes through.

    Work out what you can afford to pay

    Rather than asking what a lead costs, ask what one is worth to you. You already have the figures for this — nobody else does.

    Take your average roof cleaning job value. Take off materials, labour and your travel, so you are left with what the job puts in your pocket. Then think about how many quotes you have to give to win one job. If roughly one in three of your quotes turns into work, then three enquiries is what a job costs you — so the most you can pay per enquiry is a third of what a job is worth, and comfortably less than that if you want to make money on it.

    That is arithmetic, not a promise, and the numbers are yours to fill in. But it turns a vague worry into a ceiling: above this figure per enquiry, it is not worth doing; below it, it is.

    One thing that catches people out: a roof cleaning customer often has a drive, gutters and fascias too. If a job frequently turns into two jobs, the enquiry was worth more than the first invoice suggests — but be honest about how often that really happens.

    What pushes the cost up

    Most expensive roof cleaning advertising is expensive for ordinary, fixable reasons:

    • Broad keywords catching searches for roof repairs, new roofs, roofers wanted and people looking for work
    • No negative keyword list, so you pay for "roof cleaning jobs", "how to clean a roof yourself" and similar
    • One campaign covering roofs, gutters, drives and windows, so you cannot see or control what any of it costs
    • Clicks landing on a homepage rather than a page about the actual job they searched for
    • Adverts running well outside the area you would genuinely travel to
    • Enquiries sitting unanswered for hours while somebody else rings them back first
    • No call tracking, so nobody knows which enquiries came from advertising at all

    What brings it down

    The opposite, mostly. Tight keywords with a proper negative list. A separate campaign for roof work so its numbers stand on their own. A page about roof cleaning, with your own before and after photos on it. A sensible radius. Reviews that make you the obvious choice among three quotes. And answering quickly — speed of reply changes your cost per job more than almost anything else, because the enquiry is already paid for by then.

    If you want the detail on how the campaign side of that is built, our page on Google Ads management for trades walks through it, and there is more on this trade specifically on our roof cleaning leads page.

    Cheap leads are not the goal

    It is tempting to judge everything on cost per enquiry, because it is the easiest number to see. But you can drive that number down by advertising to people who were never going to spend much, and end up busier, poorer and more tired. A dearer enquiry from somebody with a large roof who wants it doing this month beats three cheap enquiries from people ringing round for a price. Judge the money by the jobs it produced, not by the count of phone calls.

    When this is not for you

    Worth saying plainly, because it is true more often than the advertising industry admits:

    • If you are already booked out for months, spend the money on another van or another pair of hands instead.
    • If nobody can answer the phone during the working day and there is no one to take messages, paid advertising will mostly buy missed calls.
    • If your average job is small and your margin is thin, the ceiling you worked out above may simply be too low to bid into a competitive area.
    • If you cannot leave a budget running for long enough to gather real numbers, you will be making decisions on noise.
    • If you are not willing to track where enquiries come from, you will never know whether it worked, and neither will anyone else.

    None of that means avoiding advertising forever. It means fixing what is in the way first.

    How to find your own number

    Track calls and form submissions so each one is attributed to a source. Write down what each enquiry was for and what it was worth if it booked. Review monthly, not daily — daily figures on a small budget will send you round the bend. After a couple of months you will have the only cost per lead figure that means anything: yours.

    So what does it cost?

    Honestly: it varies enough that a headline figure would mislead you. What does not vary is the method. Work out what a job is worth to you, work out your ceiling per enquiry, get the campaign tight enough that you only pay for people who want the work you do, then answer quickly and measure what books.

    If somebody runs your advertising and cannot tell you your cost per enquiry and your cost per job, that is the problem to solve before you worry about the price of a click. Always ask for current figures directly rather than relying on an average you read somewhere.

    Not sure what your leads are costing?

    We will go through your own numbers with you on a free call, and tell you straight if paid advertising is not the right fit for where your business is right now.

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  • Is Checkatrade or Bark Worth It for Trades?

    Is Checkatrade or Bark Worth It for Trades?

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    All articles Leads and CRM

    Is Checkatrade or Bark worth it for trades?

    7 September 20265 min readLeadCrafters

    Comparison showing one bought lead being sold to four different trades, next to one enquiry from your own ads reaching only you

    It is the question we get asked more than any other, usually about ten minutes into a call. Somebody is paying for leads through one of the big platforms, they are not sure it is working, and they want to know whether to stick with it.

    The honest answer is that it depends on where your business is right now. Anyone who tells you these platforms are always a rip-off is selling you something. So is anyone who tells you they are all you need. Here is how we would actually think it through.

    Three platforms, three different deals

    They get lumped together, but you are buying quite different things.

    • Checkatrade is closest to a paid directory. You pay to be listed as a vetted member, and the value is in being findable and in the trust the badge carries with certain customers.
    • MyBuilder works around jobs posted by homeowners, where you pay for the ability to quote on the ones you want.
    • Bark sells you credits to contact people who have made an enquiry, across a very wide range of services.

    Pricing on all three changes, varies by trade and by area, and is often negotiable, so we are not going to quote figures that will be out of date by the time you read this. Ask them directly and get it in writing before you commit to anything annual.

    What you are really buying

    Strip away the branding and most of these platforms sell you the same underlying thing: access to somebody else's enquiry. That matters in three ways.

    First, the lead usually is not exclusively yours. Several trades typically get the same enquiry, which means you are quoting against people you cannot see, and the customer is comparing prices before they have any reason to prefer you. That pushes everyone towards competing on price, which is the worst ground to fight on.

    Second, you generally pay whether or not you win the job. That is not unreasonable in itself, but it changes the maths. Your real cost is not what you paid for one lead, it is what you paid for all the leads it took to win one job.

    Third, and this is the one most people miss, you are renting the customer relationship rather than owning it. The reviews build on their profile. The traffic builds their brand. If you stop paying, it all switches off and you have nothing left over.

    When they genuinely make sense

    We would be lying if we said never use them. There are situations where they are the right call.

    If you are just starting out with no reviews, no website and no reputation, these platforms give you something very hard to get otherwise: customers willing to take a chance on you. Trading a slim margin for your first twenty jobs and twenty reviews is a reasonable deal.

    They are also useful for filling gaps. If you have a quiet fortnight, buying a handful of leads to plug it is a sensible tactical move. And if you are testing a new service or a new area, it is a cheap way to find out whether there is demand before you commit properly.

    When they stop making sense

    The turning point usually comes when you have built something of your own worth using. If you have a decent number of reviews, a Google Business Profile that ranks, photos of your work and a phone number people recommend to neighbours, you are paying for access to customers who could have found you directly.

    The other signal is when the maths stops working. Work out roughly how many leads it takes you to win one job, multiply that by what each lead costs, and you have your true cost per job. Compare that against what the job is worth. A lot of trades have never done that sum, and are surprised by it.

    The comparison worth making

    The fair comparison is not "platform leads versus nothing". It is "platform leads versus running your own".

    With your own campaign, the enquiry comes to you and nobody else. You are not one of five quotes arriving in the same hour. The reviews go on your profile. Over time the brand, the reputation and the customer list are yours, and they keep working when you turn the spend down.

    The trade-off is honest: it takes longer to get going, it needs someone to manage it properly, and the first month is about cutting waste rather than winning work. A platform lead lands in your inbox on day one. That immediacy is worth something, particularly if you need work this week.

    Plenty of trades run both, and there is nothing wrong with that. What we would push back on is paying platform fees for years while never building anything of your own, because at the end of it you have bought jobs but not a business asset.

    Questions to ask before you renew

    • How many leads did I pay for last quarter, and how many became jobs?
    • What did those jobs cost me in lead fees, per job won?
    • How many of those customers came back or referred somebody?
    • If I stopped tomorrow, what would I still have?
    • Am I being asked to sign for twelve months, and why?

    If those answers look fine, stay. Genuinely. If they do not, that is worth knowing before the renewal rather than after it.

    Where we come into it

    We build and run campaigns that send enquiries straight to you rather than to a shared pool, whether that is Google Ads for people actively searching or Facebook and Instagram Ads for people who have not started looking yet. We also only work with one business per trade in each area, so we are never selling the same enquiry twice.

    Not sure if your lead spend is working?

    Book a free call and we will give you a straight answer about what you are paying now, and what running your own would realistically look like in your area. We will tell you honestly if you are better off where you are.

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  • 7 Signs It’s Time To Hire A Google Ads Agency (Instead Of Running Ads Yourself)

    7 Signs It’s Time To Hire A Google Ads Agency (Instead Of Running Ads Yourself)

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    All articles Google Ads

    7 signs it's time to hire a Google Ads agency.

    22 August 20265 min readLeadCrafters

    Checklist of seven signs a service business has outgrown running its own Google Ads, from untracked conversions to ads left paused

    Plenty of UK service businesses start out managing their own Google Ads account, and there's nothing wrong with that early on. But there's usually a point where doing it yourself starts costing more, in wasted spend and missed jobs, than paying someone to do it properly. Here are the signs worth watching for.

    1. You're not sure what's actually working

    If you couldn't say which keywords, ads, or campaigns are actually bringing in paying customers, as opposed to just clicks, that's the clearest sign your account is missing proper conversion tracking, and by extension, that nobody's really steering it.

    2. Your cost per lead keeps creeping up

    Google Ads accounts left unmanaged tend to get more expensive over time, not less. Without regular pruning of underperforming keywords, adding negative keywords, and refreshing ad copy, you end up paying more for the same, or fewer, leads month after month.

    3. You're getting leads, but they're the wrong ones

    Plenty of enquiries but few actually turn into booked jobs? That's usually a targeting problem: broad match keywords, the wrong locations, or ad copy that doesn't filter out people who were never going to be a good fit in the first place.

    4. You don't have time to check it regularly

    Google Ads isn't a "set it up once and forget it" system. It needs regular attention to stay efficient. If you're running a business and only glancing at your account once a month, or less, it's very likely losing money quietly in the gaps.

    5. You've never tested different ads or landing pages

    The businesses that get the most out of Google Ads are constantly testing: different headlines, different offers, different landing pages, to see what actually converts best. If your ads and landing page have looked the same since day one, there's almost certainly performance being left on the table.

    6. Leads come in, but nobody follows up fast enough

    This one isn't really an ads problem at all, it's a systems problem. Studies on lead response time consistently show that the odds of converting a lead drop sharply the longer you wait to contact them. If leads are sitting in an inbox for hours before anyone replies, you're paying for clicks you're not capitalising on.

    7. You're competing against businesses with dedicated marketing support

    If your competitors are running polished, well-tested campaigns backed by an agency or in-house marketer, a self-managed account is starting from behind. Not because your business is worse, but because theirs has more consistent attention behind it.

    What hiring the right agency actually changes

    A good agency isn't just "someone else clicking the buttons". It's ongoing keyword and negative keyword management, conversion tracking that actually tells you what's working, regular ad and landing page testing, and a system for making sure every lead gets followed up quickly. That combination is what turns ad spend into booked jobs rather than just clicks.

    At LeadCrafters, every campaign includes a CRM that lets you view, manage, accept and reject every lead as it lands, so the follow-up side is covered too, not just the ads.

    Final thoughts

    None of these signs on their own mean you have to hire an agency. But if two or three sound familiar, it's worth at least getting a second opinion on your account before more budget goes out the door.

    Want a second opinion on your account?

    Book a free call and we will look at what you are currently running and tell you honestly whether it is worth bringing in support.

    Book a free call See Google Ads
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  • Google Ads vs Facebook Ads: Which Should Your UK Service Business Choose?

    Google Ads vs Facebook Ads: Which Should Your UK Service Business Choose?

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    All articles Google Ads vs Facebook Ads

    Google Ads or Facebook Ads: which should you choose?

    22 August 20265 min readLeadCrafters

    Side by side illustration of a Google search ad for roof cleaning next to a social media feed ad, comparing demand that already exists with demand you create

    It's one of the first questions every UK service business asks when they decide to start advertising online: Google Ads or Facebook Ads? The honest answer is that they solve different problems, and for a lot of businesses, the real question isn't "which one" but "which one first."

    Here's how to think it through properly.

    The core difference: intent vs interruption

    Google Ads shows up when someone is actively searching for what you do: "emergency plumber near me", "garage door repair", "boiler installation cost". They already have a problem and are looking for a solution right now. That's intent-based advertising.

    Facebook and Instagram Ads work differently. They interrupt someone scrolling their feed who wasn't necessarily looking for your service at that exact moment, but matches the audience you've targeted by location, interests, age and behaviour. That's interruption-based advertising.

    Neither is better in the abstract. They're built for different moments in a customer's decision.

    When Google Ads tends to win

    • Urgent or problem-driven services — emergency repairs, breakdowns, anything with a "I need this fixed now" moment.
    • High-intent searches — services people actively research before buying, like driveways, boiler replacements, or legal advice.
    • Businesses that want leads ready to act — someone searching is generally further down the decision-making path than someone scrolling.

    When Facebook and Instagram Ads tend to win

    • Visual, aspirational work — landscaping, renovations, before-and-after transformations that photograph well.
    • Building brand awareness in a local area — getting your name in front of the same households repeatedly, even before they need you.
    • Lower cost per lead in many cases — Facebook's cost-per-click is often lower than Google's for competitive trade keywords, though lead quality can vary more.
    • Retargeting website visitors — bringing back people who checked out your site but didn't enquire the first time.

    Cost differences worth knowing

    Facebook Ads generally have a lower cost-per-click than Google Ads for the same trade, simply because you're not paying for someone's active search intent, you're paying to be shown to a relevant audience. The trade-off is that a Facebook lead is often earlier in their decision, so conversion rates from lead to paying customer can be lower without a solid follow-up process in place.

    This is exactly why we build a CRM into every LeadCrafters campaign. Following up quickly and consistently is what turns a Facebook lead browsing at 9pm into a booked job, not just an enquiry that goes cold.

    So which should you choose?

    For most UK trade and service businesses, the honest recommendation is this: if you can only run one platform, start with Google Ads for the urgent, high-intent searches, then add Facebook and Instagram Ads once you want to build a wider pipeline and stay visible to people before they're actively searching.

    Running both together tends to outperform either alone. Google catches people at the moment of need, Facebook keeps your name in front of them the rest of the time, and retargeting ties the two together.

    Final thoughts

    There's no universal right answer between Google Ads and Facebook Ads. It depends on what you sell, how urgently people need it, and how visual the work is. If you're not sure which fits your business best, that's exactly the kind of thing worth talking through before spending a penny.

    Not sure which is right for you?

    Book a free strategy call and we will give you an honest recommendation based on your industry, not a one-size-fits-all pitch.

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  • How Much Does Google Ads Cost For UK Service Businesses In 2026? A Full Pricing Guide

    How Much Does Google Ads Cost For UK Service Businesses In 2026? A Full Pricing Guide

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    How much does Google Ads cost for UK service businesses in 2026?

    22 August 20266 min readLeadCrafters

    Diagram splitting Google Ads costs into three parts: ad spend paid to Google, a monthly agency management fee, and a one-off setup cost

    "How much does Google Ads cost?" is one of the most common questions we get asked by UK service businesses, and it's a fair one, because the honest answer is "it depends." Unlike a fixed-price product, Google Ads runs on an auction, so your cost is shaped by your industry, your location, your competitors, and how well your account is actually set up.

    This guide breaks down exactly what you're paying for, what's typical for UK trade and service businesses in 2026, and how to avoid the hidden costs that quietly drain a budget.

    The two costs you're actually paying for

    Every Google Ads campaign has two separate costs, and mixing them up is where a lot of confusion starts:

    • Ad spend — the money paid directly to Google every time someone clicks your ad. This goes straight to Google, not to whoever manages your account.
    • Management fee — what you pay an agency or freelancer (or the time cost of managing it yourself) to research keywords, write ads, build landing pages, and optimise the campaign over time.

    A cheap management fee with a badly built campaign almost always costs more in wasted ad spend than a slightly higher fee attached to an account that's actually optimised. The management side is where the real value, or the real waste, happens.

    Average Google Ads costs for UK service businesses

    Cost-per-click (CPC) varies hugely by trade. As a rough guide for 2026:

    • Home services (plumbers, electricians, roofers, garage doors, landscaping) typically see CPCs from around £2 to £8.
    • Higher-ticket trades (boiler installation, driveways, extensions, solar) often sit in the £5 to £15 range, since the lifetime value of a customer is much higher.
    • Professional services (solicitors, accountants, financial advisers) can see CPCs well above £15 to £20 in competitive areas.

    These are general ranges, not guarantees. Your actual CPC depends on how many competitors are bidding in your area and how relevant Google judges your ads and landing page to be.

    How much should you budget to see real results?

    As a starting point, most local service businesses need at least £500 to £1,000 a month in ad spend to gather enough data for the campaign to start optimising properly, with £1,000 to £2,000 and above being a more realistic range for businesses wanting a steady, predictable flow of leads rather than a trickle.

    Spending too little is one of the most common reasons Google Ads "doesn't work" for a business. The campaign never gets enough clicks and conversions to learn who your best customers actually are.

    Management fees: percentage vs flat fee

    Agencies typically charge one of two ways:

    • Percentage of ad spend — usually 10 to 20 per cent. The downside is the agency's incentive is for you to spend more, whether or not that spend is actually needed.
    • Flat monthly fee — a fixed price regardless of ad spend. This removes the conflict of interest entirely, since the agency isn't paid more for pushing your budget up.

    Hidden costs that catch businesses out

    The sticker price is rarely the full story. The costs that actually sink a Google Ads budget are usually:

    • No conversion tracking — without it, neither you nor Google's algorithm can tell which clicks actually turned into paying customers, so the campaign can never truly optimise.
    • Broad match with no negative keywords — ads showing for irrelevant searches, burning through budget on clicks that were never going to convert.
    • Slow or unclear landing pages — paying for a click only to lose the visitor because the page took too long to load or didn't make it obvious what to do next.
    • No lead follow-up system — the ad spend did its job and generated the enquiry, but the lead went cold because nobody followed up quickly enough.

    This last one is exactly why we build every LeadCrafters campaign with a CRM that feeds lead outcomes back into Google Ads. The better the follow-up, the better the algorithm gets at finding you more of the same.

    What LeadCrafters charges

    We keep our pricing simple and transparent: a one-off £400 setup fee and a flat £250 a month for ongoing management. No percentage-of-spend fee, and no incentive on our end to push your budget higher than it needs to be. Your ad spend is paid directly to Google, so there's never a markup hiding in the middle.

    That includes campaign setup, keyword research, ad creation, a CRM to manage every lead that comes in, and a dedicated account manager watching performance week to week.

    Final thoughts

    Google Ads cost is really two decisions in one: how much you spend with Google, and how well that spend is managed. Get both right and it becomes one of the most predictable ways to generate new customers. Get either wrong and it's easy to burn through a budget with little to show for it.

    If you'd like an honest, no-obligation look at what a realistic budget would look like for your business, book a free strategy call below.

    Want a realistic number for your trade?

    Book a free strategy call and we will give you a budget that actually makes sense for your area and your job value, with no obligation.

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  • How Marking Leads In Your CRM Helps Your Facebook Ads Perform Better

    How Marking Leads In Your CRM Helps Your Facebook Ads Perform Better

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    All articles Leads and CRM

    How marking leads in your CRM makes your Facebook Ads better.

    16 May 20266 min readLeadCrafters

    Three step diagram: a lead lands in the portal, you mark it booked or no job, and the ad platform relearns which people to target

    Running Facebook ads is not just about generating leads, it's about generating the right leads.

    One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is treating every lead exactly the same. If Facebook only sees form submissions but never knows which leads actually became customers, the algorithm has very little data to improve campaign quality over time.

    This is where CRM lead tracking becomes incredibly powerful.

    At LeadCrafters, our CRM system allows businesses to mark leads as "booked" or "not booked". That information is then sent back to Facebook through the Meta Conversions API, helping the algorithm better understand which types of people are most likely to become real customers.

    The result? Better lead quality, improved campaign performance and more booked jobs.

    Why Facebook's algorithm needs better data

    Facebook's advertising system is powered by machine learning. The platform constantly analyses user behaviour to decide who is most likely to complete your desired action.

    Most businesses only optimise for:

    • Lead form submissions
    • Website enquiries
    • Messages
    • Calls

    The problem is that not all leads are equal. Some leads are serious buyers ready to book immediately, while others may never answer the phone or may simply be price shopping.

    If Facebook only tracks "leads", it cannot tell the difference between:

    • A high-value customer
    • A time waster
    • Someone outside your target budget
    • Someone who never responds

    This can slowly reduce campaign quality over time.

    How CRM feedback improves your ads

    When you mark a lead as "booked" inside our CRM system, that data is sent back to Facebook using the Meta Conversions API.

    This tells Facebook:

    "This is the type of lead we want more of."

    At the same time, marking poor-quality leads as "not booked" helps train the algorithm away from similar users.

    Over time, Facebook begins learning:

    • Which demographics convert best
    • Which behaviours produce real customers
    • Which audiences are more likely to book
    • Which leads generate actual revenue

    This allows campaigns to become smarter and more efficient.

    What is the Meta Conversions API?

    The Meta Conversions API is a server-side connection between your CRM and Facebook. Instead of relying only on browser tracking, it sends real customer actions directly back to Meta's systems.

    This improves:

    • Data accuracy
    • Lead quality optimisation
    • Campaign learning
    • Attribution tracking
    • Long-term ad performance

    It also helps reduce tracking issues caused by iPhone privacy updates, ad blockers, browser restrictions and cookie limitations. For modern Facebook advertising, this type of tracking is becoming essential.

    Why businesses see better results

    Businesses using proper CRM feedback systems often experience:

    • Higher-quality enquiries
    • Lower cost per booked job
    • Better return on ad spend
    • Improved lead consistency
    • Faster campaign optimisation

    The reason is simple: Facebook performs best when it receives accurate conversion feedback. Without this feedback, campaigns are often optimising blindly.

    Speed still matters

    Even with advanced CRM tracking, fast follow-up remains critical. Businesses that contact leads quickly typically convert far better than businesses waiting hours or days to respond.

    Our CRM system helps by providing instant lead notifications, mobile and email alerts, easy lead management, booking tracking and automated follow-ups. This helps businesses respond while the customer is still actively interested.

    The long-term advantage

    One of the biggest advantages of sending booking data back to Facebook is that campaigns often improve over time. As more conversion data is collected, the algorithm becomes better at identifying ideal customers.

    This creates a compounding effect where lead quality improves, conversion rates increase, cost per booking often decreases and campaign stability becomes stronger. Instead of constantly restarting campaigns, you build a smarter advertising system that improves month after month.

    Final thoughts

    Generating leads is only the first step. The real power comes from helping Facebook understand which leads actually become paying customers.

    By marking leads as booked or not booked inside your CRM, you give Facebook the data it needs to optimise for real business results, not just form submissions.

    Want ads that get smarter every month?

    Every LeadCrafters ads package includes the CRM that makes this possible. Book a call and we will show you how it works.

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