Google Ads for Durham contractors, fenced to the towns you serve

The location setting most Durham campaigns get wrong

Google offers two location options. The default, Presence or interest, reaches people in your chosen area plus people elsewhere who have shown interest in it. The stricter Presence option reaches only people who are in, or regularly in, your targeted locations. Google's own help page on location options explains both.

For a contractor who needs to drive to the job, interest is rarely useful. Someone in Etobicoke researching "Whitby" isn't hiring a Whitby roofer for their own house. So on most campaigns we:

• choose Presence
• target the municipalities or postal areas you actually serve
• add location exclusions for places just over the border that you don't want, such as Scarborough or Markham
• check the location report each month and exclude anything that slipped through

That one change often stops a surprising share of wasted spend in the first week.

What's included

1. An account you own. If you already have one, we audit it. If not, we set it up in your name.
2. Campaigns by service, not one big bucket. Emergency repairs, replacements and planned projects behave differently and deserve separate budgets.
3. Keyword and search-term control. Weekly reviews of what people actually typed, with negatives added for job-seekers, DIY searches and services you don't offer.
4. Ad copy that names your towns. "Serving Ajax, Pickering and Whitby" earns more relevant clicks than generic claims.
5. Call and text tracking so we can see which campaigns produce conversations, not just clicks.
6. Local Services Ads, where Google offers them for your trade, tested against standard search.
7. A bid ceiling built from your own numbers, explained below.

Bids come from your margins

We set limits based on what a lead is worth to you. Here is a simple worked example you can redo with your own figures:

If one in eight clicks becomes a lead, you can afford about $34 per click and still hit that target. When searches in Pickering cost more than that, we either lower bids, narrow the hours, or shift budget toward Clarington and Whitby where clicks are cheaper. The ad budget guide covers this step by step.

Timeline and measurement

• Week 1: audit or build, tracking, location settings.
• Weeks 2–4: first data; daily search-term clean-up; early bid changes.
• Months 2–3: budget shifts toward the services and towns producing booked jobs.
• Ongoing: monthly review of cost per lead, cost per booked job and lead quality by town.

We report on calls answered, texts, emails and, when you share outcomes, jobs won. Clicks and impressions are in the appendix, not the headline.

Mistakes to avoid

• Running one campaign for "Durham Region" and letting Google decide where the money goes.
• Sending ad clicks to your home page instead of a page for that service and town.
• Missing calls. An unanswered ad call is the most expensive lead you'll ever buy; a missed-call text-back tool such as CallText.chat can catch them while you're on a job.
• Judging after ten clicks. Give a campaign enough leads to tell signal from luck.

Who it suits

Ads suit contractors who can take more work now, want to fill a slow season, or are entering a new Durham town and can't wait for SEO. They work best with a website that converts, so see contractor websites if yours is slow on a phone. Plan costs are on the pricing page, separate from ad spend.