Most contractors I talk to are running one of these two ad types — and most of them picked the wrong one. They heard a buddy at a trade show say "LSAs are where it's at," signed up, burned through $2,000 in a month, and got three calls from people asking if they clean gutters. Or they ran Google Ads without the right landing page and paid $85 per click to send people to a homepage that didn't tell them who you are or what you do.
Both of these ad types work. But they work for different reasons, different budgets, and different stages of your business. If you're running the wrong one, you're bleeding money every day you don't fix it.
This is the breakdown I wish someone had given me when I started running ads for home service contractors five years ago.
What Google LSAs Actually Are (In Plain English)
LSA stands for Local Service Ads — but you've probably seen them called the "Google Guaranteed" ads. They're the three boxes at the very top of Google when someone searches "roofer near me" or "HVAC repair [your city]." Each box has your company name, your star rating, a green Google Guaranteed badge, and a phone number.
Here's what makes them different from regular ads: you only pay when someone calls you or messages you through the ad. Not per click. Per lead. And before Google lets you run them, they make you pass a background check, verify your license, verify your insurance, and claim your Google Business Profile.
That green badge matters. Homeowners trust it. When three roofers show up in the LSA box and one of them has the Google Guaranteed badge with 4.9 stars and 127 reviews, guess who gets the call.
What Google Ads (PPC) Actually Are
Google Ads — sometimes called PPC or "pay-per-click" — are the sponsored text results that show up below the LSA boxes and above the map. They look like regular search results except they have a small "Sponsored" label.
You bid on keywords like "roof replacement [city]" or "emergency AC repair." Every time someone clicks your ad, you pay. Whether they call you or not. Whether they're a real homeowner or a competitor spying on your prices.
That sounds worse than LSAs, but it's not. Google Ads give you something LSAs don't: control. You decide exactly which searches trigger your ad, exactly what the ad says, exactly what page the clicker lands on, and exactly how to track what happens next.
Cost Per Lead: The Real Numbers
I pulled the last 90 days of data across the contractor accounts we manage. Here's what leads actually cost right now, not what some blog post wrote three years ago.
Google LSA cost per lead by trade
- Roofing: $50–$95 per lead
- HVAC: $45–$85 per lead
- Plumbing (major jobs): $40–$75 per lead
- Electrical: $35–$70 per lead
- Kitchen and bath remodeling: $45–$85 per lead
- Pool builders: $65–$120 per lead
- Foundation repair: $55–$100 per lead
Google Ads cost per lead by trade
- Roofing: $65–$140 per lead
- HVAC: $55–$110 per lead
- Plumbing: $45–$95 per lead
- Electrical: $50–$100 per lead
- Kitchen and bath: $80–$180 per lead
- Pool builders: $100–$220 per lead
- Foundation repair: $90–$170 per lead
On paper LSAs look cheaper. They usually are — on a per-lead basis. But cost per lead is not the full story. What matters is cost per signed job. And that changes everything.
The Lead Quality Difference Nobody Talks About
This is the part most marketing blogs skip. A $55 LSA lead and a $110 Google Ads lead are not the same lead.
LSA leads skew toward fast, urgent, smaller jobs. Someone's AC went out. Their water heater is leaking. They need a roofer today because a branch came through. The searcher is panicked, they click the first three boxes, and they call whoever picks up. They weren't comparing you against competitors. They weren't on your website for 8 minutes reading about why you're different.
That's fine if you want the phone ringing right now. But the close rate on LSA leads — at least in the accounts I run — usually lands between 18 and 32 percent. The ticket size runs smaller. And you get a lot of calls that aren't really your ideal job ("do you do mobile home roofs?" "how much for a single shingle?").
Google Ads leads are different. They clicked an ad. They landed on your website. They watched your video, read your reviews, scrolled through your recent projects, and then they filled out a form or called. By the time they talk to you they're already half-sold.
Close rates on Google Ads leads — when the landing page is built right — usually land between 28 and 45 percent. Ticket sizes are bigger because the bigger-money searches (roof replacement, full HVAC system, kitchen remodel) don't always trigger LSAs, but they always trigger Google Ads.
When You Should Run LSAs
LSAs are the right move if one or more of these is true:
- You need the phone ringing this week and you don't have one yet
- Your Google Business Profile has 50+ reviews and a 4.5+ star average
- You're licensed, insured, and can pass a background check
- Your close rate on inbound calls is strong (your CSR or owner answers every call and doesn't miss any)
- You want to capture emergency and "near me" searches that skip the rest of the page
- Your average ticket is under $15,000 — the margins support a per-lead cost of $50–$95
One more thing: LSAs reward fast responses. Google tracks whether you answer the phone. If you miss calls or take four hours to call back a message, your LSA ranking drops and your cost per lead goes up. This is not a "set it and forget it" channel.
When You Should Run Google Ads
Google Ads are the right move if one or more of these is true:
- You sell bigger-ticket work (roof replacements, HVAC system installs, kitchen remodels, pool builds, repipes, panel upgrades)
- You have a real landing page for each service, not just a homepage
- You track calls and form submissions with call tracking numbers
- You want to show up on searches that LSAs don't cover (like "GAF master elite roofer [city]" or "whole house repipe cost")
- Your average ticket is over $8,000 and you can absorb a $75–$140 cost per lead
- You want the ability to retarget people who visited your site but didn't call
Google Ads also open up the door to call-only ads, display remarketing, and YouTube — but the core play for most contractors is search ads pointing at a dedicated landing page.
The Right Answer for Most Contractors: Run Both
This is the part that will save you the most money: the best-performing contractor accounts I manage run both — at the same time — and let them feed each other.
Here's how it works in practice. LSAs at the very top of the page catch the "I need someone now" traffic. Google Ads below that catch the "I'm researching my options" traffic. Your Google Business Profile in the map pack catches the organic searchers comparing reviews. Every slot at the top of the page that can be filled with your company name, you fill.
A homeowner searching "roof replacement [city]" in 2026 might see your LSA ad, scroll past, see your Google Ad, click it, read your landing page, bounce, see your retargeting ad on Facebook that afternoon, then come back the next day and finally call. That's one customer that looks like they "came from Facebook" but actually came from four touches you paid for.
When you run both channels right, your cost per signed job drops 30–50 percent compared to running either channel alone. That's not marketing hype. That's what the math does when you stop measuring cost per lead and start measuring cost per signed job.
The Five Mistakes I See Every Week
These are the same five things I see contractors do wrong over and over. Fix these before you spend another dollar on ads.
1. Sending Google Ads traffic to your homepage
Your homepage is for people who already know your brand. A $95 click from Google Ads deserves a landing page built for that search. "Roof Replacement in [City]" gets its own page. "Emergency AC Repair" gets its own page. One page per service, per city, built to convert.
2. Not tracking calls with a tracking number
If you can't tell me how many calls came from your LSA ads vs your Google Ads vs your website vs word of mouth, you are flying blind. Call tracking numbers from CallRail, WhatConverts, or similar run $30–$75 per month and pay for themselves the first week.
3. Missing calls
The average roofer in our data misses 17 percent of inbound calls. Every missed call is a lead you paid $50–$95 to generate that you just handed to a competitor. Hire a 24/7 answering service if your team can't cover it. The math always works out.
4. Ignoring negative keywords on Google Ads
If you don't tell Google Ads what searches NOT to match, you will pay for clicks on "free roof inspection job application" and "cheap roof repair DIY" and every other garbage variation. A negative keyword list is not optional.
5. Letting an agency run ads without showing you what's happening
If your marketing person can't tell you in one sentence what your cost per signed job is, you don't have a marketing person — you have an expense. Every month you should know: how much you spent, how many leads came in, how many signed, and what your cost per signed customer was.
How DG Agency Runs This for Contractors
We typically set up new contractor accounts to run LSAs and Google Ads in parallel starting around $2,500–$4,500 per month in ad spend, split across both channels based on your trade, your ticket size, and your service area. We build the landing pages, set up the call tracking, load the negative keywords, write the ad copy, and send you one dashboard that shows exactly where every call and every signed job came from.
The goal isn't "more leads." The goal is more signed jobs at a lower cost per signed job than you're getting today — and knowing the number well enough to scale it.
What to Do This Week
If you're running only LSAs right now, look at your biggest-ticket services and build landing pages for them. Those searches are not in the LSA box. You're leaving them for your competitors.
If you're running only Google Ads right now, get your Google Business Profile to 50+ reviews and apply for LSAs. The "near me" and emergency traffic is a different buyer than your Google Ads traffic, and you want both.
If you're not running either, start with whichever fits your budget and business right now. You don't need both on day one. You need one working channel you can track, one landing page built right, and one answered phone.
One working channel beats three broken ones. Every single time.
