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Stan Consulting · Problem · Construction Marketing

I am spending five figures on Google Ads and the phone is quiet.

Spending five figures. Getting clicks. Phone is quiet. Here is what the audit actually finds in 7 days for $999.

Get the Diagnostic · $999

The complaint

The version of this you would write at 9pm after seeing the monthly invoice.

You have spent $14,400 on Google Ads this quarter. The dashboard says 2,100 clicks. The dashboard says 312 "conversions." The dashboard does not say how many of those conversions turned into closed jobs. You looked. The CRM says four.

You called the agency. They sent a deck. The deck showed your CTR went up. Your impression share went up. Your "conversion rate" went up. You asked how many of those conversions were jobs. They said the system counts a form submission, a phone call over 30 seconds, and a request-for-quote click. You asked which of those produced revenue. They said they would pull a report by Friday.

The report came back. Of the 312 conversions, 187 were form submissions. Of the form submissions, half were people asking if you do gutters when you are a roofer, or asking for the cheapest price possible, or filling out the form to "see how much it would cost" without a job. Of the phone calls, half were under a minute because the caller was not your trade.

You did the math on the back of an envelope. The cost per actual job ran $3,600. Your average ticket is $7,200. After materials and labor you are losing money on Google Ads and the agency is showing you the CTR went up.

You are not sure if Google Ads does not work for contractors, or if your account is broken, or if the agency is the issue. The dashboard says one story. Your bank says a different one. The phone is quiet.

What you already tried

Things you already did. None of them moved the closed-job number.

  1. Asked the agency to add negative keywords. They added some. The wrong searches kept coming. You added a few yourself. The search-terms report shows the leak is still there, just smaller.
  2. Switched to Performance Max because the rep said it would work better. Spend went up. Job count went down. The campaign optimizes toward "conversions" and the conversions in the account were never tied to closed-job revenue.
  3. Tightened the geo radius from 25 miles to 10. Volume dropped. Cost-per-click stayed flat. The geo was a partial fix, not a structural one.
  4. Built a new landing page with a bigger phone number. The new page got the same conversion rate as the old one. The phone number got more clicks. The job count did not change. Click-to-call is not the gate.
  5. Threatened to pause the account. The agency wrote a memo about "give it 90 days to mature." You gave it 90 days. The mature account loses money at a higher CPC than the young one did.

The diagnostic questions

Seven questions to answer alone. The answers tell you where the spend actually went.

This is where the page changes register. Answer these on paper. Most contractor Google Ads accounts have never been read this way.

  1. What is your cost per closed job from Google Ads in the last 90 days, calculated against actual revenue and not against "conversions" from the dashboard?
  2. What does your search-terms report show in the last 30 days, and which searches are most expensive without producing jobs?
  3. What is the conversion event the campaign is optimizing toward, and is that event the same thing as a closed job?
  4. Who told you the cost per lead would drop as the account matured, and what did they base that claim on?
  5. What does your landing page do in the first 8 seconds for a buyer who lands cold from a paid click?
  6. If you turned the spend off tomorrow, what does that do to the closed-job pipeline in 30, 60, and 90 days?
  7. What would have to be true for you to keep paying the current cost-per-job for another 12 months without changing anything?

If five of these come back blank, the spend has been judged by the dashboard, not by the bank. The audit measures it against closed-job revenue in seven days.

What is actually happening

What the audit finds in cases like this.

The voice shifts from here. This is the structural read. Five things show up in almost every contractor Google Ads account.

  1. The conversion event is wrong. The campaign is optimizing toward a definition of "conversion" that includes form submissions from price-shoppers, sub-minute phone calls, and clicks on the request-quote button. The algorithm is doing its job; the goal is set to the wrong outcome. See Where Contractor Ad Spend Actually Goes.
  2. The search-terms report is buying the wrong queries. "Free quote," "cheap roof repair," "DIY questions" all show up in the search-terms report and nobody reads them. Negative keywords are added reactively. The structural fix is a match-type and negative-keyword sweep, not a one-time deletion.
  3. Performance Max is reaching audiences that are not buyers. PMax extends search budget into display, YouTube, and Discover placements that look high-volume on the dashboard and underperform on closed-job revenue. The campaign type is fine for some accounts; for most contractor accounts it is a leak.
  4. The landing page is generic. Paid traffic lands on a home page or a generic services page. The buyer who clicked an ad for "roof inspection in Folsom" does not see the words "roof inspection in Folsom" in the first 8 seconds. The mismatch costs the lead.
  5. The intake is treating paid leads like referral leads. A paid lead behaves differently. They are comparing three contractors at once. The intake script for a paid lead needs to anchor and qualify in the first 60 seconds. Most contractor intake runs the referral script on paid leads and loses them to the next contractor in the tab.

The three layers to read

What the diagnostic actually scores against.

01

The conversion-event layer

What the campaign is optimizing toward. What the dashboard is counting as a win. How that maps against closed-job revenue. The first move is almost always to re-define the conversion event.

Read the Reference →

02

The search-terms layer

The actual queries the budget bought in the last 30 days. The expensive ones that produced nothing. The cheap ones that produced everything. The negative-keyword sweep and the match-type fix.

Read the Position →

03

The handling layer

What happens after the click. Landing-page match, phone-handling, intake script, follow-up cadence. Half the contractor Google Ads problem lives off-account, in the handling.

Read the Reference →

What most contractors get wrong here

Three readings that look right and are off by a mile.

  1. Misreading 01

    "Google Ads does not work for contractors anymore."

    It works when the conversion event, the search-terms hygiene, and the handling layer are correct. Most contractor accounts that "do not work" are failing on one of those three. The platform is not the variable.

  2. Misreading 02

    "Performance Max is the future. I should be all-in on it."

    PMax is one campaign type. For most contractor accounts, Search remains the core. PMax can be a layer on top once Search is producing closed jobs reliably. Going PMax-first before Search is solid usually accelerates the leak.

  3. Misreading 03

    "My CTR is up so the account is improving."

    CTR moves with ad copy and match type. It does not predict closed jobs. The metric that predicts closed jobs is cost per closed job, calculated against actual revenue, not "conversions." Most dashboards do not show this number by default.

What gets diagnosed

The seven readings inside a 7-day audit.

Cost per closed job calculated against actual revenue, last 90 days, broken out by campaign.
Search-terms report sweep. Expensive non-converting queries identified. Negative-keyword list delivered.
Conversion-event audit. What the campaign is optimizing toward and what it should optimize toward.
Campaign-type fit. Search vs PMax vs Local Services Ads scored against your trade and geography.
Landing-page review. Message-match, trust signals, first 8 seconds, mobile rendering.
Intake script for paid leads. Anchor, qualify, route. Different from the referral script.
Three prioritized moves with the largest expected lift on closed-job rate. Each has a 60-day timing estimate.

What you get

The value stack at $999.

  1. Written diagnostic report

    Seven days. PDF and editable doc. Three named moves with the largest expected lift on closed-job rate.

    $2,400 value
  2. Cost-per-closed-job math against your last 90 days of spend

    Actual revenue divided by actual spend per campaign. The number the dashboard does not show.

    $1,000 value
  3. Search-terms sweep and negative-keyword list

    Last 30 days of expensive non-converting queries. Negative-keyword list ready to upload.

    $600 value
  4. Conversion-event re-definition plan

    What to count as a conversion. How to wire it. How to keep the algorithm pointed at revenue, not at activity.

    $800 value
  5. Landing-page rewrite brief

    Message-match, first 8 seconds, trust block, phone-prominence, mobile rendering. Built to your trade and your geography.

    $700 value
  6. 60-day follow-up review call

    One hour. Re-measure the cost per closed job. Name what to do next.

    $400 value

Total named value: $5,900. Price: $999. The math defends in 15 seconds.

What you are already paying

Price math against the alternatives in your inbox right now.

Current Google Ads spend

$4,800/mo

Four jobs closed last quarter. The math is negative against materials, labor, and overhead. Same trajectory next month.

Agency retainer to manage it

$1,500/mo

Twelve months in. The deck shows CTR. The bank does not show closed jobs. The relationship is hard to exit without disruption.

The diagnostic

$999

One time. Seven days. Written report you own. Three named moves. Keep it whether you hire us or not.

Common questions

On record.

What is a typical contractor Google Ads conversion rate?

The industry average runs around 1.9% for general contractor search campaigns. Trades that handle the intake call well land higher. Trades that send paid traffic to a generic home page run lower. The diagnostic measures your number against your trade and your geography.

Why am I getting clicks but no calls?

Three usual causes. The keyword match is pulling research traffic, not buyer traffic. The landing page is asking for the form before the trust is built. The phone number is on the page but the click-to-call event is broken. The diagnostic separates the three and names the highest-impact fix.

Is Performance Max the right campaign type for contractors?

Sometimes. Search remains the most reliable contractor campaign type. PMax can work as a layer on top, but most contractor accounts on PMax alone burn budget on placements that do not convert. The audit names whether your account fits or not.

What if my agency runs the account?

The diagnostic works regardless of who runs the account. You provide read-only access. The findings are delivered to you, not the agency. Most contractors choose to share the report with their agency after; some do not.

Do you work outside California?

Yes. Stan Consulting works with construction operators across the United States. The office is in Roseville, California.

What if my spend is under $2,000 a month?

The diagnostic still applies. The fixes scale down. Smaller accounts often have a single conversion-event problem that is producing 60% of the leak.

Can you take over the account after the audit?

Yes. If the diagnostic shows that ongoing management is the right next step, that engagement is available. Most contractors start with the $999 diagnostic and decide from there.

The engagement format

Find out where the five figures actually went.

Seven days. Written report. Three named moves. The cost-per-closed-job number against actual revenue. You keep it whether you hire us or not. The math defends in 15 seconds and the bank reads the same story as the dashboard.

Get the Diagnostic · $999 Or write with one specific question first.

The platform is not the variable. The reading of the platform is.

Related reading · Marketing Atlas

If you want the structural reading before the audit.

Position · Doctrine

Where Contractor Ad Spend Actually Goes

The structural reasons a healthy-looking Google Ads dashboard produces a quiet phone, and what to do about it.

Case File · Composite

HVAC Operator, Five Figures on Tire Kickers

One contractor. Twelve months of Google Ads. The reveal is in the search-terms report and it changes the spend allocation overnight.

Reference · Concept

Contractor PPC Economics

The math. The denominators. How to read the dashboard against the bank. How to set the conversion event so the algorithm optimizes for revenue, not for activity.

California operators

Construction operators near our Roseville office.

California · Sacramento metro

Folsom

High contractor density and high Google Ads spend density. CPCs above $40 on competitive roofing and HVAC terms.

California · LA basin

Los Angeles

High average ticket. High CPC. The conversion-event problem is the most common $5K-a-month leak in this market.

California · Coastal

San Diego

Year-round trade season. Performance Max creep is the most common audit finding among San Diego contractors.