Google Ads can be incredibly profitable for trades businesses — or a significant money drain. The difference is almost always in the setup and management. If your campaigns are not delivering results, here are the six most common causes.

1. Wrong Keyword Match Types

Using Broad Match keywords is one of the most expensive mistakes in Google Ads. Broad Match lets Google interpret your keyword very loosely — a “plumber” broad match could trigger your ad for “plumbing apprenticeship” or “plumber salary”. Switch to Phrase Match and Exact Match for your core keywords. You will pay for fewer but far more relevant clicks.

2. No Negative Keywords

Negative keywords tell Google what NOT to show your ads for. Without them, you are paying for clicks from people who will never book you. Review your search terms report immediately — you will almost certainly find dozens of irrelevant searches eating your budget. Add negatives for: “DIY”, “how to”, “cheap”, “free”, “jobs”, “salary”, “courses”, “supply only”.

3. Poor Landing Pages

A great ad sending traffic to a weak landing page is like filling a leaky bucket. Your landing page needs to immediately confirm you provide the service searched for, show your phone number prominently, display trust signals (reviews, accreditations), and make it trivially easy to get in touch. A poorly converting landing page can mean you are paying 3-5x more per lead than necessary.

4. Not Tracking Calls as Conversions

Most trade jobs are booked by phone, not by form. If you are only tracking form submissions as conversions, Google is optimising to the wrong signal. Set up call tracking through Google Ads (using a Google forwarding number) and count calls over 60 seconds as conversions. Your campaigns will optimise far more effectively.

5. Running Ads 24/7 Without Reviewing Performance by Hour

Check your performance data by time of day and day of week. For most trades businesses, ads performing at 2am get clicks from people who cannot be called back immediately and often do not follow through. Concentrate budget during business hours or use bid adjustments to reduce overnight spend by 50-70%.

6. Ignoring Quality Score

Quality Score is Google’s rating of your ad relevance. High Quality Scores mean you pay less per click for better positions. Low Quality Scores mean you pay more for worse positions. Improve your Quality Score by: matching your ad copy closely to your keywords, ensuring landing pages are relevant to the ad, and improving your expected click-through rate with better ad copy.

The ROI Check

Regularly calculate your actual ROI: total ad spend divided by number of jobs booked (not leads). If you are spending £1,000/month on ads and booking 8 jobs at an average of £800 each, that is £6,400 revenue from £1,000 spend — excellent. If you cannot calculate this because you are not tracking it, that is problem number seven.

We manage Google Ads campaigns exclusively for trades businesses. See our Google Ads service or book a free campaign audit.