When someone in your area needs a trade, they search on their phone and take one of the first options they see. In the UK that means they see Local Services Ads at the very top, then the map pack with three businesses, then everything else.
If you are not in those two places, you are competing for the leftovers. The good news is that both are earned mostly through doing the basics well and consistently, not through spending the most money.
This is how we approach them for trades clients.
Google Business Profile: the front door
Your Google Business Profile is what appears in the map pack and in the knowledge panel when someone searches your name. For most trades it produces more enquiries than the website does.
The basics that matter: the right primary category (an aerial installer should not be listed as an electrician), a service area that matches where you actually work, accurate opening hours including whether you answer at weekends, and a phone number that is the same as the one on your website and in directories.
Beyond the basics, the profile rewards activity. Add photos of real jobs, not stock images. List every service with a short description. Use the posts feature occasionally. Answer the questions people leave. Google treats a maintained profile as a signal that the business is real and active.
Reviews: quantity, recency and replies
Reviews are the single biggest factor in whether someone chooses you from the map pack, and a strong factor in whether you appear there at all.
Three things count: how many you have, how recent they are, and whether you reply. A business with 40 reviews from three years ago looks worse than one with 25 reviews where the last one was this week.
The only reliable way to get reviews is to ask, at the moment the customer is happiest, which is usually when the job is finished and working. A text with a direct link to your review form, sent from the van before you drive off, is the method that works. Make it part of the job, not an afterthought.
Reply to every review, including the bad ones. A calm, factual reply to a one-star review does more for you than ten five-star reviews with no response.
Local Services Ads: paying per lead, not per click
Local Services Ads are the listings at the very top of results with the Google Guaranteed badge. They work differently from normal Google Ads: you pay per lead (a call or message), not per click, and you can dispute leads that were not genuine.
To run them you go through a verification process covering your business details, insurance and, for some trades, background checks. It takes a few weeks and is worth doing early.
Ranking within Local Services Ads is driven largely by your review score, how quickly you respond to leads and how many leads you have actually answered. A business that lets calls ring out will drop down the list regardless of budget. This is why call handling is part of marketing, not separate from it.
How the two work together
Local Services Ads and Google Business Profile share your reviews. Effort put into reviews improves both at once. They also share the requirement that your business details are consistent everywhere.
A typical pattern for a trades business: Local Services Ads catch the urgent, high-intent searches ("aerial not working", "emergency repair"). The map pack catches people comparing options and reading reviews. Standard search ads fill gaps for specific services and areas where the other two are thin.
Track all three separately, with call tracking and form tracking, so you know what each one costs per enquiry and per job. Without that you will end up funding whichever one feels busiest.
The mistakes we see most
The same handful of problems come up in almost every audit:
- The wrong primary category, or too many categories, diluting relevance.
- A service area set to the whole of London when the business only travels to a few boroughs, which wastes leads and annoys customers.
- No process for asking for reviews, so they arrive at random and mostly from unhappy customers.
- Missed calls from Local Services Ads, which quietly kills the ranking.
- Different phone numbers on the website, the profile and directories.
None of these is hard to fix. Most can be sorted in an afternoon. The difficult part is keeping the habits going, which is where having someone accountable for it each month makes the difference.
Have questions about this topic? Get in touch—we're happy to discuss your specific situation.