Most home service owners I talk to have had the same thought at some point: the ads are running, leads are coming in, but I’m not completely sure whether this is as good as it should be. That’s a reasonable thing to wonder. Google Ads is a big, busy platform, and the reports it gives you aren’t really built for owners. They’re built for people who live inside the account every day.
A second opinion is just a fresh set of eyes on the same account. It’s normal in plenty of other parts of running a business. You’d get a second quote on a big equipment purchase or have another accountant look over a tricky return. Your ad account deserves the same, especially once it’s one of your larger monthly expenses.
Here’s what I think a good review should cover, what you’ll need to have ready, and how to get real value out of one.
A second opinion isn’t a verdict on your agency
I want to say this first because it’s the part that makes people hesitate. Asking for a review doesn’t mean anyone did anything wrong. Accounts drift. Google changes defaults, adds new campaign types, and moves settings around. A setup that was right two years ago can quietly fall out of step without anyone touching it, simply because nothing in the platform prompts you to revisit it.
The best reviews I’ve been part of ended up helping the agency too. They came away with a clear list of agreed priorities and an owner who understood the account better. That’s a good outcome for everyone. If you’re curious how that relationship can work long term, I wrote about it in who manages my marketing agency for me.
What a useful review actually looks at
A real review follows the money from the click to the booked job. These are the areas I’d expect it to cover, roughly in this order.
- Tracking. Is every lead being counted once, and only once? Are phone calls, form fills and booked appointments all recorded? I’ve seen a brand new website live for weeks with the tracking slots set up but never actually filled in, so the account had no idea which ads were working.
- Where the money goes. Which campaigns, which keywords and which search terms are spending the most, and are those the ones producing leads? This is usually where the quickest savings show up.
- Campaign types that don’t fit the goal. Some campaign types are great for awareness and not built for phone calls. One account I looked at was spending about $4,000 a month on a video campaign that had produced four conversions in four months. The campaign wasn’t broken. It just wasn’t designed for what the business needed.
- Budget and visibility. How often are your ads not showing because the daily budget ran out? That’s what impression share lost to budget really means, and it’s one of the first numbers I teach owners to read.
- Your Google Business Profile. Duplicate listings, wrong categories or old hours can pull calls away from you, and they never show up in your ads reports.
- What happens after the lead. How many leads turn into a scheduled appointment, and how many of those turn into jobs? The ad account can’t see this on its own, but it changes what good performance looks like.
What you’ll need to share
You don’t need to prepare much. The most useful things are:
- Read-only access to your Google Ads account. Your agency or whoever manages it can add a user in a couple of minutes, and read-only means nothing can be changed by accident.
- Access to Google Analytics and Search Console if you have them.
- A rough idea of your average job value and how many leads you close. Ballpark numbers are fine.
- What you’re hoping to get out of it. More leads, cheaper leads, better leads, or just a clearer picture are all good answers.
That’s it. A good reviewer will do the digging from there.
The numbers I’d want you to leave with
Whatever else a review turns up, I think you should come away knowing two numbers for your own business: your cost per lead and your cost per booked job. The first tells you what the ads cost. The second tells you what growth costs. I explain the difference in cost per lead vs cost per booked job.
Here’s a quick example of why both matter. Say your average job is $6,000 and you close about 30 percent of the leads that reach an appointment. Each lead is worth roughly $1,800 in revenue. If leads cost $150, that looks great on paper. But if only half of them ever get scheduled, your real cost per booked job is much higher than the ad report suggests, and the fix may have nothing to do with the ads.
If you want a broader checklist to run on your own, my post on the numbers that tell you whether your Google Ads are working is a good place to start.
How to tell a real review from a sales pitch
Plenty of free audits are really just a way to start a sales conversation. That’s not a bad thing on its own, but it helps to know what you’re getting. Here are a few things I’d want cleared up before you put weight on any review, including mine.
- Does it use your actual numbers? A review that could have been written about any account isn’t telling you much.
- Does it explain why, not just what? Every recommendation should come with a plain reason you can understand and repeat to your team.
- Is it prioritized? Twenty findings with equal weight are hard to act on. Three clear priorities are easy.
- Does it say what’s working? Every account has things going right. A review that only lists problems is missing half the picture.
- Can your current team act on it? The best outcome is often a short list your existing agency can carry out, with no change of provider at all.
What happens after
Usually one of three things. Sometimes the account is in good shape and the review simply confirms it, which is worth knowing. Sometimes there are a handful of changes your current team can make right away. And sometimes the bigger gap isn’t the ads at all but the lack of someone looking across all of your marketing, setting priorities and holding the pieces together. That last one is where a fractional CMO tends to help most.
Any of those outcomes leaves you better off than wondering. You’ll understand your own account better, and you’ll be able to ask sharper questions in your next agency meeting.
Want a second set of eyes?
If you run a home service business and you’d like me to take a look, you can request a Google Ads audit here. I’ll go through your account, explain what I find in plain language, and give you a short list of priorities you can act on with or without me. No jargon, and no pressure to change anything you’re happy with.