Home Service Advertising: Which Channels Actually Booked Jobs

What are the main home service advertising channels?

Most plumbers, painters, roofers, HVAC companies and remodelers choose from the same short list:

• Google Local Services Ads. Pay-per-lead listings at the top of Google with a Google Guaranteed badge.
• Google search ads (pay-per-click). Regular ads that you pay for when someone clicks.
• Yelp. A review site where businesses pay for ads and profile placement.
• Facebook and Instagram. Ads shown to people based on location and interests, whether or not they are shopping.
• Google Business Profile. Your free map listing, which is not an ad but behaves like one when it ranks.
• Referrals and lead marketplaces. Customer word of mouth, plus sites that sell leads, sometimes the same lead to several companies.

Every one of these can work for someone and fail for someone else. The point of this guide is to give you a way to tell which ones book jobs for your business, using real tracked numbers instead of sales pitches.

Which channel booked the most jobs for the money?

A family-owned residential painting company in Southern California ran Google Local Services Ads, Facebook/Instagram and Yelp Ads from January 1 to August 24, 2026. Its average job is worth about $13,000. Every lead was tracked to a closed job in the CRM.

A few notes on how to read this. Yelp results are estimated from Yelp's mix of paid and free leads, of which 51% were paid. Revenue is closed job revenue, not profit. Organic, referral, repeat and yard-sign customers are not counted. The full breakdown is in our home service ads case study.

The smallest budget, Local Services Ads at $10,548, brought in the most revenue: $116,257. Yelp took more than three times that budget and brought in a little less revenue. That is the whole lesson of this guide in one table: spending does not equal results.

Why did the cheapest leads cost the most?

Cost per lead and cost per job point in opposite directions in this data. Facebook had the cheapest lead at $104, but jobs cost $3,541. Local Services Ads had a $229 lead but only $1,319 per job. The reason is what happens between the lead and the signature:

Yelp is a good example of why one number is not enough. 71% of its leads booked an estimate, the highest of any channel, but fewer of those estimates turned into signed jobs. A report that stopped at "estimates booked" would have made Yelp look like the winner. A report that stopped at "cost per lead" would have crowned Facebook. Only the full path from lead to signed job shows the real answer.

How do the channels compare side by side?

The table below puts all six options in one place. The first three rows rely on the tracked painting data. The Google search ads, Business Profile and marketplace rows are general descriptions, because that company did not run Google search ads in this data and we have no tracked results for the others.

What is each channel really good for?

Local Services Ads: people ready to hire

People who see a Local Services Ads listing are searching for your service right now. In the painting data, 63% of those leads booked an estimate and 28% of estimates closed. That is why the channel returned 11x despite $229 leads. The details of ranking, badges and disputes are in our guide to Google Local Services Ads, and whether they suit you in are Google Local Services Ads worth it?

Google search ads: control over keywords

Pay-per-click search ads let you pick the words people search and send them to a page you control. That control is valuable for specific services, certain cities or jobs Local Services Ads does not cover. The cost is that you pay for every click, whether or not that person ever calls. We compare the two Google options directly in local services ads vs Google ads. The painting company did not run search ads in this data, so we do not claim a result for them.

Yelp: high booking rate, high cost

Yelp brought the highest share of leads who booked an estimate. But at an estimated $37,053 in spend and about $4,260 per job, it needed strong follow-up and a close rate to match. Whether it fits depends on your trade and market. We cover it in are Yelp ads worth it?

Facebook and Instagram: offers, not urgent searches

Facebook produced 170 leads, the most of any channel, but only 29% booked an estimate. It does best with a clear offer and a seasonal reason to act. Rob once rebuilt a gymnastics center's winter camp campaign, spending about $345 on Facebook ads for 112 leads, after Rob's $100.46 test of the center's existing funnel produced none. See Facebook ads for contractors for the full story.

Google Business Profile: the free base layer

Your Business Profile is where many people first see your name on a map. Keep your services, service area, hours, photos and reviews current. It costs nothing but attention, and it supports every paid channel, because people check your reviews before they call.

Referrals and marketplaces

Referrals from happy customers are usually the cheapest jobs you will ever close, so ask for them. Lead marketplaces can fill gaps, but many sell the same homeowner's request to several companies. If you use them, answer within minutes. Our guide to lead generation for contractors covers the full list of sources.

How should you split your advertising budget?

Use the numbers you have, not the ones a sales rep gives you.

1. Start with tracking. You cannot split a budget well if you do not know which channel produced which job.
2. Rank channels by cost per signed job. In the painting data that order was Local Services Ads ($1,319), Facebook ($3,541), then Yelp (~$4,260).
3. Put the most money where cost per job is lowest, up to what the channel can absorb. Local Services Ads can only deliver as many leads as people search for in your area, so there is a ceiling.
4. Keep a small test budget on the others. Channels change, and a channel that is mediocre today may improve after you fix your offer or follow-up.
5. Move budget in steps. The painting company reduced Facebook spending from about $3,400 a month in the first quarter to about $1,200 by summer instead of switching it off.
6. Give each channel enough time. Local Services Ads had two months with no closed jobs, then $37,000 closed in July. Judging that channel after month two would have been a mistake.
7. Review monthly. Update the table, look at where leads drop off and adjust.

What is a good return on ad spend for a local business?

It depends on your margin, but the real examples give you something to compare against.

The education company Rob worked with grew its monthly ad budget from $5,000 to $50,000 and still earned about $4 for every $1. It could keep scaling because every dollar was tied to a sale. That matters more than the ratio itself. A channel returning 4x that you can scale tenfold is worth more than one returning 11x that tops out at a small budget.

Return on ad spend here means closed revenue divided by ad spend. It is not profit. To know what return you need, use your margin:

• Break-even return is 1 divided by your gross margin. For example, if your job-level margin is 25%, you break even at 4x. If it is 40%, you break even at 2.5x.
• Subtract everything else it takes to run the job and your business, such as overhead and the time spent on estimates.

That is not a number from the painting data, just arithmetic you can run with your own margin. It shows why a 2.8x channel can lose money for one company and make money for another. The numbers above are for closed revenue, so check yours against your own costs before you decide.

How do you track home service ads properly?

Tracking is where most of this goes wrong. A few rules:

• Give every lead a source. Use a consistent label in your CRM for each channel.
• Follow every lead to a result. Record whether it booked an estimate, whether the estimate closed and the revenue.
• Watch for mislabels. In the painting data, 39 customers had been logged in the CRM as plain "Google" when they came from Local Services Ads. Without fixing that, the best channel would have looked worse than it was, and "Google" would have looked better than it was.
• Know what is not counted. Organic, referral, repeat and yard-sign customers were outside these figures. Add them in a separate row so you see the whole business.
• Use the same date range for spend and revenue. Jobs often close weeks after the lead came in.

Our lead tracking service sets this up inside the CRM you already use.

Does response time change what ads are worth?

Yes, more than most owners expect. You paid for every lead, and buyers often contact several businesses. Harvard Business Review research in 2011 on 2,241 U.S. companies found that responding within an hour made firms nearly 7 times as likely to qualify a lead. That is why speed to lead belongs in any advertising plan. If you cannot answer every call, an AI receptionist can pick up and book estimates for you.

Where should a home service business start?

1. Get your Business Profile complete and your reviews moving. It costs nothing.
2. Set up lead source tracking before you spend more.
3. Test the channel that reaches people ready to hire. For many service businesses, that means Local Services Ads, or Google search ads, which we compare in local services ads vs Google ads.
4. Add a second channel, such as Facebook for offers or Yelp if your market supports it, with a smaller budget.
5. After a quarter, compare cost per signed job and move the budget.

If you are a painter, our guides to how to get painting leads and marketing for painting contractors apply this to your trade.

Want to know which of your ads are booking jobs? Start with Rob's free Growth Leak Audit.