Google Ads and Local Services Ads for Mississauga trades

What it is

There are two main paid formats a trade will meet on Google:

• Search ads, the text ads above and below the organic results, where you choose the keywords, write the ads and set bids.
• Local Services Ads, the boxed listings that appear for many home-service searches, where you pay per lead rather than per click once Google has screened your business.

Both use the same targeting idea: you tell Google where your customers are. Google's help centre explains how to target ads by location, including by radius and by excluding places you don't want. For a city as spread out as Mississauga, those exclusions are often worth more than any clever ad copy.

Who it suits

• trades with spare capacity this month or this season
• emergency services where the customer calls the first credible result
• companies launching a new service, such as heat pumps or EV chargers, where organic rankings don't exist yet
• businesses whose local SEO is still building and who need calls in the meantime

It suits a business poorly if no one can answer the phone during working hours, or if the average job is so small that the click cost swallows the profit.

What is included

1. The break-even sum. Gross profit per job multiplied by your close rate sets the maximum cost per lead. If a $900 drain job leaves $400 of gross profit and you win half your leads, a lead is worth $200 at most, and we would aim well below that.
2. Targeting by ward and drive time. A company based near Dixie and Eglinton might cover the eastern wards fully and bid lower west of the Credit River, where drive times climb.
3. Keyword and negative-keyword lists, so you stop paying for "jobs", "course", "DIY" and searches for competitors' names you never intended to buy.
4. Ads written for Mississauga searchers, naming the area and the service, and pointing to a matching page rather than your home page.
5. Call and text tracking. Every call and text from an ad is recorded against the campaign that produced it.
6. Local Services Ads set-up and dispute handling where your trade qualifies, including flagging leads that were never genuine.

Timeline

• Week 1: account audit or set-up, the break-even sum, conversion tracking.
• Weeks 2–4: a limited launch on your highest-value services and closest wards.
• Months 2–3: shift budget toward the terms and areas that book jobs, cut what doesn't.
• Ongoing: monthly review against the agreed ceiling, with seasonal adjustments for things like the first cold snap, spring thaw or the summer cooling rush.

How results are measured

We judge ads on booked work, not clicks. The monthly report shows:

• spend, leads and cost per lead per campaign
• leads by ward or postal area
• the share of leads your team marked as booked
• search terms we excluded that month and why

If cost per lead runs above the ceiling for two straight months with no sign of improving, we pause and rethink rather than keep spending.

Mistakes to avoid

• Targeting "Mississauga" as one block. You end up paying for a click from Meadowvale Village when your truck is in Lakeview.
• Sending every ad to the home page. A visitor looking for a sump pump should land on a sump pump page.
• Letting broad match run unchecked. Without negative keywords, broad terms drift into unrelated searches fast.
• Judging on one week. A few calls are too small a sample; give a campaign enough volume to read.

Ads work best on top of a website built for conversion and alongside local SEO that lowers costs over time. The guide on your first 90 days of Mississauga marketing walks through the budget maths in more detail, and pricing shows how our fee fits in.