Many business owners are wondering why their Local Service Ads (LSAs) aren't performing well, others are wondering if they are missing out by not running them. This 3 minute read will help you answer these questions.

Some quick background

Current Status of LSAs

Back in 2018, the first adopters of LSA ads saw immediate results. Competition for the ad space was low and consumers were generally unused to the "Google Guarantee" badge. One Roofer recently told me they were wildly successful with this strategy early on.

However, if you're currently running LSAs you may have noticed that performance has started to drop. There are a few potential reasons driving this change:

• Competition: Since the advent of LSAs the number of advertisers using LSAs has increased exponentially. Look at this graph representing interest in LSAs measured by people looking up local service ads on google. Increased competition is going to translate directly to higher costs for advertisers. Frankly, this is exactly what Google wants to have happen - competition for ad space that increases their revenue.

• Economic Factors: Since the end of 2023, home improvement spending has been on a steady decline. This is partially due to the Covid pandemic ending, but there seem to be additional financial trends as American consumers are stretching their pocketbooks more. Your local service area may just not have the demand that was previously driving LSA traffic

• Lack of Optimization: With the increase in competition, optimization has become even more important. Here are 2 actions you can take that most LSA advertisers aren't doing to optimize their ads:
• Mark appointments as booked: Marking appointments is a way of telling Google to send you more clients like the ones that have succeeded. This is in Google's best interest so that they don't waste the time of the consumer and will help your LSA ads become more efficient by showing up for those successes more often than the unsuccessful ones.
• Answer the phone or respond to requests fast: Being quick to respond not only helps the customer, but it also helps Google give the customer what they want quicker. One of the biggest impacts on small business owner's success if whether or not they answer the phone. In this case, not only will they miss out on business, but Google will know if you're not answering the phone or messages and will be less likely to show your ad to customers. Lastly, often your response times will be shown to customers on Google and a long response time could disincentivize good customers from reaching out to you

LSA ads are easy to set up, not so easy to optimize. If you need help optimizing, managing, or just evaluating your LSA ads, reach out and we can help.