Google’s Local Service Ads is nothing but a locally focused, simplified, pay-per-lead program available to specific industries. To take part, businesses must go through a screening process where they submit their insurance, license, certification, and degree information. Google then conducts a background check to verify that the documents submitted by the business are accurate and that the company is in good standing.
The business must also have a verified Google My Business listing with an average review score of 3.0 or higher.
As soon as all the necessary procedures are over, the business will be approved and brought into Google’s Local Service Ads (LSA) dashboard. This allows your brand name to show up in the coveted LSA Carousel.
Google currently offers two different types of Local Service Ads
1. Google Screened – This helps professionals like architects, lawyers, real estate agents, and tax specialists build a trusted reputation online. It has been in beta until now.
Image Source: https://www.google.com
2. Google Guaranteed – This includes almost all home services industries, including plumbers, carpet cleaners, electricians, and HVAC. The best part is, services that cannot exceed $2000 per Google profile is backed by a money-back guarantee.
Image Source: https://www.google.com
Google received immense success with the Google Screened program. Now that it’s out of beta, they are expanding the business categories that can participate and rolling it out globally.
Actionable Strategy – Before you start, you first need to find out if your clients are local. You will have to check if they are eligible to participate in these ads, because the cost per lead is dramatically lower than other platforms and early adoption goes a long way. If you can be the first in your industry and region, that means low cost leads until everyone else catches on.
Once the competition grows, your listing is ranked within the carousel based on your Google Reviews and your responsiveness to leads. It’s necessary to manage your ad timings meticulously, because you don’t want to miss any calls while you have your ads running. But you also don’t need to worry much, as the management of these campaigns is not complicated. The important thing is to manage them.