Google Local Service Ads (LSAs) are changing, and HVAC and plumbing contractors need to pay attention.
John Wilson sits down with Sam Preston, CEO of Service Scalers, to break down the latest Google LSA changes in 2026 and how home service businesses can generate more leads while improving their return on ad spend.
They discuss Google's new missed-call billing, changes to the LSA platform, and why Google Business Profiles, reviews, and local SEO are becoming increasingly important.
Plus, John shares real marketing data from his home service companies, while Sam breaks down current HVAC, plumbing, and electrical lead costs and how contractors can track LSA performance all the way to actual revenue.
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In This Episode:
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• What's changing with Google Local Service Ads in 2026
• Why missed LSA calls can still cost you money
• How Google Business Profiles and reviews affect LSA performance
• Current HVAC, plumbing, and electrical cost-per-lead benchmarks
• How to optimize LSA budgets, targeting, and lead quality
• Tracking Google LSA leads to booked jobs and actual ROI
• Using LSAs to expand into new service areas
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Sponsors
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Catalyst | May 3–5 | Akron, Ohio
100+ home service owners and operators. Three days of tactical sessions, real conversations, and learning from great operators.
Grab your seat: https://www.ownedandoperated.com/catalyst
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Resources
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What Are Google Local Service Ads? A Clear Explanation for Business Owners
https://www.ownedandoperated.com/post/what-are-google-local-service-ads
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Connect
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John Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/
Sam Preston | Service Scalers
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-preston-a682103b6/
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More Ways To Connect with OAO
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
📌 Disclaimer: Some links may include UTM parameters or affiliate relationships, meaning we may earn a commission if you make a purchase. Episodes may feature sponsors, but all opinions expressed are our own.
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Chapters
- 00:00Why Every Contractor Should Be Running Google LSA
- 00:38Google Local Service Ads in 2026
- 03:00Scaling Home Service Businesses With Digital Marketing
- 06:29LSA Ad Spend, ROI, and New Missed-Call Billing
- 11:13Google's New LSA Platform and Google Business Profiles
- 20:54LSA Cost Per Lead, Tracking ROI, and 2026 Strategy
If you've never turned on LSA, like that's numero uno.
If you want to win LSA, answer the phone and that'll help out.
I haven't seen any of the new LSA stuff.
Yeah, I mean, it is functioning just like a performance max game. The way you set up your Google business profile directly affects how good your LSA is going to perform. People that have been running this for a while really need to start dialing into how much of a return am I getting from this LSA account.
What else on LSAs do you think are important for people like operating in 2026? Umed
and operated, a top 100 business podcast. I'm your host, John Wilson. On this show, we talk about home service businesses, how to build them, how to buy them, how to get leads, and how to sell stuff. Today I'm joined by my good friend Sam Preston, the CEO of Service Scalers, and we're talking Google local service ads. Let's go.
Welcome to the show. LSA. LSA. LSA.
I always love it. I know I've said this a lot on this show. I always love it when um I talk to someone and they're like, what's an LSA? Like we had uh we we had someone, and they're like big businesses. Like uh we had someone at our workshop in September, and it's like they were like 14 million dollars. And they're like, yeah, dude, I've never turned on LSA. And I I'm pretty sure I threw a pen at them from like across the I'm just are you like I'm just like mad. Like to be able to have to be able to be at 14 million and have like the easiest, highest performing lead channel still available to you is nuts to me. Uh that's crazy.
It is so good. I was talking to somebody the other day who is, I think they're at like four million, and it was him and his partner, and they had done nothing digital. All they'd done is uh door knocking. Uh they'd get a job and they would door knock. And I was just like, that like you're at four, like, why not turn something on at this point? Which is obviously why they're talking to us. But like, so good. I love it uh when they build that. Or even like we talk to people all the time that like I just bought another business and they're at six because they've been around for 28 years, and they've never done anything digital. Um want to like spin that up.
And so we we have one of those right now. We're actively like prepping to partner with a business, and they don't they basically have no digital. Um, and it is a very large business. Uh, so it's a big opportunity. It it's fun to be able to walk into an opportunity that has such low-hanging fruit still available. You're like, okay. Uh whereas like we've maximized all that stuff like fucking years ago.
Yeah.
You know, there's no more fruit on that tree for Wilson. Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh so when you're taking over a business that has no digital, do you usually the business is built off of referrals and stuff like that? Uh, generally, are you thinking we wrap that in the Wilson brand? Or do you start going, no, I want to build that brand in inside of that company in that local area?
Uh, we'll leave them separate. Something I don't think I've done a good job of this year in the show is like I got I got feedback from a friend of mine like a month ago, and he's like, Yeah, I mean, every time I listen to the show, like the revenue number changes. It's like, yeah, I mean, we're actively like, yeah, I agree. Yeah, I'm you know, yeah, yeah. Stuff's going on, but uh yeah.
Um I think I had somebody at the other day I was talking about you, and they're like, is he at 40 million yet? 50? And I was like, honestly, he's probably like 200 at this point. Like he keeps buying business and growing, and it's like it's crazy.
Well, basically, like we're pacing 87 for the year, which like which on one hand is kind of cool, and on the other hand, it's like it's not a hundred.
So but it's more than 32.
Is literally that cool? Yeah, like it's still eight digits. Yeah, like give me nine. Yeah. Come on. Yeah, yeah. Oh, so I'm happy about it and only slightly disappointed. But uh all that to say, um, yeah, we've been we've been partnering with a lot of businesses, and a lot of what we do, a lot of what we've done this year is we leave the brand in place and then we like bring best practices. So, hey, here's what worked for Wilson. Like, here's exactly what took Wilson from like five million to 30 million, and that's like here's the sales stuff that we designed, or here's our marketing program that works, and here's how we budget. Um, we train their leaders. Uh, you know, we have like these two internal academies for uh techs and leaders, and um so yeah, we just like put people inside the system. You know, we spent nine years building a system, and the 10th year has been going from 30 to 90 million, I guess. Uh, and just like inserting more people into that system. So, like, long answer to your question, we keep the brand, we add digital as soon as we can, we like sign up lead aggregators pretty quick, and we look for the low-hanging fruit. Like, hey, if you've never turned on LSA, like that's numero uno. You know, we're gonna walk right in and we're gonna look like geniuses because we clicked a button. It's gonna be sick.
Do you know how much of uh how much ad spend you're spending in LSA across all your brands and how much of that 87 is being pulled in through uh just LSA? Yeah.
One of the best things that you can do as a home service operator is get in the right room with other great entrepreneurs. And that's what we are building with Catalyst. Over the past few years, we've hosted six awesome events where we bring home service entrepreneurs from all over the country to our shop in Akron, Ohio. We're taking everything that we've learned from those six events and we are putting it into something awesome. From May 3rd to the 5th, 100 plus home service entrepreneurs are coming to our shop in Akron, Ohio for three days, where we're gonna be having tactical sessions, breakout conversations, and learning from some of the greatest operators in the industry. You're also just gonna be building relationships with people facing the exact same problems that you are every single day. This is going to be our strongest room of operators yet. Grab your seat for Catalyst below.
Um, but this is month to date. It's October 21st. So this is our spend. So we're at 112,905 in lead spend so far in the month of October. Um, so on this spreadsheet that I have cracked up here, this is like our uh, I call it Ralph, but it's like our AI data tool that we built. If if anyone was listening to this show like a few months ago, I was complaining about how we couldn't get visibility into our data. Um, so what I ended up doing was like building visibility to our data, claud code, and a couple athletic NA beers. You'd be amazed what you can do. Uh but LSA, um, you can see there's actually like a number of LSA accounts. You can see LSA Solon, LSA Franklin, Brentwood, Old Hick, Copley, Fort Wayne, uh, Google. There's a lot of LSA, and then um inside each, like it sort of breaks it down by like, you know, where it's going. It is early in the month. I mean, we could do like a rolling 30, and that might be better. But basically, yes, we do have um, we do have the so yeah, rolling 30 days, we're at 152,000 to spend. Our biggest, you know, we spent 10 grand in our biggest LSA account, we got a three times ROI, so that's not that amazing. Our second biggest, we got also three times, also not that amazing. Probably some of that might be like September, is kind of like low.
Yeah.
Um that's not true. I think Google's I think Google PPC is actually LSA. I don't think we actively have PPC running. No, it's not. So I'll have to check like what's going on there. Yeah. Um, but I bet it's because they just did that switch over to um like Google Ads.
We have like half the accounts are still running in the old campaigns, and we have a handful of that are running in the new ones. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Um, we're actually building this for our clients right now. Uh, and so that should be rolling out a couple uh weeks where we can actually like go through this exact type of framework uh to prove out. The only thing I'm sitting not seeing there that I would love to see is like uh estimate revenue. Uh, because we see that 3x number, but we know that like significantly more bids have been coming in from LSA. Yeah, it we just didn't close them. We just didn't close them. So, like, is that an LSA issue or is that a sales issue? Um and so yeah, we've also seen a lot more spam calls start to come through LSA, uh, which is super interesting. Uh, we're watching the data as our as coming in for our clients and going, realizing a lot more. And I don't know if that's just like an AI, like people are using more bots to kind of push through to that, which is my guess. But we've also seen a lot more disputes win out, whereas in the past, not as many. I think it was like 90% of all our disputes would not actually take, and Google wouldn't um accept the return, or like this is a bad lead. Um, but we're getting like 70% of them are getting rejected now. So we're like winning 30%. I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Uh, the other thing that's super interesting that Google just uh ran out in October, October 1st, is that missed calls billing went live. So if you miss the call, you're still going to be charged uh for that call, which is a big thing. And we're trying to get we're we're pushing all that data back to our clients who are like, hey, look, you've missed all these calls and you're getting charged anyways. So let's answer that phone, you know? Um so if you want to win LSA, answer the phone uh and that'll help out.
Yeah, do we know how much credit or discount is given to AI versus human? Because I know that they were starting to flag if a phone call was picked up by AI versus human.
Not right now.
Um I wonder if it'll ever be a thing. I mean, honestly, it seems like the most intelligent thing for Google to do is just launch an AI phone answering service.
Yeah. Where it just like directly connects and you can just push it through.
Yeah, like it's fucking Google. Like Google could make server-side in house call, jobber, field pulse, everybody just open up an API to Google and just direct book.
Yeah, I think that's coming. I've I in fact we've seen like the uh hints of that being tested out. Um, but I think that's gonna that's gonna be pulled in real quick. That's that's I think one of the reasons why they're moving everything into the Google Ads platform, is just because it's a much easier system to run that through. Um and they just literally never updated that LSA old account. Like it's been the same thing for decades.
Okay, so have you you've experimented a little bit with the new, you want to walk us through it? I actually haven't seen anything. I think we just like I haven't seen any of the new LSA stuff.
Yeah, I mean, it is functioning just like a performance max campaign. So if you've ever run a performance max campaign, it is very much, you know, set your products, set your locations, uh, start to pull in um images and stuff like that. It's actually directly connected into your Google Business profile. So the way you set up your Google Business profile uh directly affects how good your LSA is going to perform. We're starting to, like in the past, we run like just your paid campaigns if you wanted, or just your organic campaigns. And now if we have your LSA account, we're like, hey, we would love to have a hand in your how this is at least set up and how often you're posting and things like that, how you're getting your reviews, um, because it just it affects our performance on LSA. So uh super important.
Have you and you've you've not noticed a decline in lead volume as accounts have transitioned over?
No. Uh I'm trying to think through them. No, I don't think we've seen any.
And that's really been the biggest thing we've been afraid of is just like it deteriorating.
No, I haven't seen any kind of dip there. Um, we haven't seen any performance problems. Um, my guess is it still will happen in the transition because things won't be set up correctly or like when they change it. I don't know how how good they're gonna be at like, oh, hey, these are the locations you're at. This is exactly the locations you're gonna be at now. Uh we are starting to see, and I confirmed this this morning before this podcast, we're starting to see a lot more out-of-location leads come through. Um, and like like this wasn't generally like the location that you were targeting, but now it is. And interesting enough, like Google is starting to let that wider service area match. Um, so like out-of-state firms showing up in the local um LSA. Um, and they actually confirmed on uh an interview that that is intended. Um, which again, I think is just gonna be opening it up more uh for everyone to kind of go play that LSA game uh through PMAX.
So like how would that work? So like I could I could drive Leeds in Pittsburgh.
So from in in Google Ads, what we would do is like you have to reset your locations that you have to actually be inside uh of that area. But let's say you have a home in Stowe, Ohio, but I live in Charleston, right? Like I might call up and say, yo, I've got an HVAC problem. Will you go help me out? But right now that LSA won't show. And so they're opening that up. Um, and so I think that that'll be one of those things that I think happens in the transition that you'll start seeing more of those, and you just have to make sure you have to go set your location preferences correctly inside of Google Ads to make sure you're not showing up there. Unless you want to.
Well, yeah, I actually kind of am thinking about it being like a superpower for like LSAs uh or or not LSAs, but like new locations that you want to launch into. Uh friend of mine um just threw like an old GBP into a new metro that they're prepping to launch into, and like it worked. Like literally, I think several thousand dollars of sales this week, and they don't even have like people there yet, which was fucking awesome. Um so I'm imagining like that means that like so in you know, fast forward 90 days, we're gonna have Fort Wayne, Indiana, Madine, Ohio, Akron, Cleveland, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan. We don't have Toledo. So we're spending a lot of time like, well, how do we just like Toledo's literally the dead fucking center of all of those markets? How do we build into Toledo? And the easiest way would be smashing four LSAs to like cover that gap, throw a GBP over there and start hiring.
Yeah. Yeah. Um I don't know if you can do that perfectly at the moment, uh, unless that like location.
But like maybe that's the intent.
Maybe that's yeah. Um, I personally would run some uh, I mean, obviously, I would I would get in some sort of website, throw in some SEO there, uh, to start organically ranking and having a brand. We are seeing a direct impact on how good your goo uh your SEO is to how good your Google ads perform. Um so I would be pushing in there. I would go buy up, you know, four different uh little locations to plant your Google business profiles there, uh, and then start to try to push that uh that leap flow through LSA.
Yeah, I think I actually think I kind of like that change. I know that might be inconvenient for um others, but yeah.
We're just keeping an eye on it and we're you know, every every phone call that comes in gets transcribed, and we get to go in and label it correctly. So, like, hey, where's this location? Where they're asking for it. Uh is somebody out of the location but asking for a location in that area. Uh, are they looking for a service that you actually sell? Uh, and then we're getting that information back to our clients. Uh, and sometimes it's worth it, right? We get a bunch of uh leads from a location that is like an hour and a half away. So it's not perfect, but it's like, yo, you might get somebody that's out there that it can start handling those leads, helps you expand your territory uh and get into an area that uh is underserved.
There's a few areas, so like we have over the past uh year, really, like we've been obviously acquiring a lot of businesses. So like we brought on um Medina, Ohio, multiple in Fort Wayne, Detroit, Michigan, uh Grand Rapids follows Detroit, and then Dayton, really something small in Columbus, and then uh Nashville, obviously. But what we're missing is Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, uh Toledo, and uh missing one. Louisville. Basically anything in Kentucky at all. We like skipped a whole state on accident. So we're starting to like really think about like, hey, this year we like got our pillars, we got our seven locations. How do we get how do we end the year next year with like 10 to 12, but like cover all the gaps that we're missing so that we can have our 150-ish million of like roughly average, you know, location revenue, 10 million. And I think all that to say, I think we're gonna end up having to greenfield kind of a lot of them. Because I, you know, there's just like a bunch of these cities that like there's no companies to buy um as much as we want them. Like, I don't know how many companies there are in Cincinnati, yeah. Uh, but it doesn't seem like there's a ton of deal flow out there. Uh Indianapolis is kind of the same thing. Uh, so we're just not like having a ton of luck um doing that. But I think yeah, greenfielding then like how to think about GBPs and how to think about LSAs is like just be becoming more and more top of my mind because it is uh the proven by my friend earlier this week, uh like one GBP drove thousands of dollars of leads just being in the right spot.
Yeah, I've got a friend who uh is less about the buying game and more about like just expand uh expanding his brand. Uh and he's done a good job of going from Dallas to Waco, and now he's pushing into Austin, um uh Texas. And he does like he's really good at that branding game, uh, where he like his socials just pop uh and people love it. Um and so he's done a really good job of like before he enters an area. Uh he buys up billboards, he buy, he starts pushing in through the socials, he does like those random like things to get people's attention inside of the city. He goes and buys up uh a location, starts putting out that GVP, and then like like this is before they've even entered the market, and then does a full-on Google Ads, Facebook ads, uh LSA. Like he gets uh actually, he doesn't do LSA. Uh he's in uh Attic and Installation. Um, so he he pushes in on all the other stuff, like get the social presence in there first, and then pushes in uh his paid. Um and he did a phenomenal job in Waco, absolutely crushing it there, and now he's moving into Austin.
Yeah, that's interesting. Do you know average order value? It's big.
Uh, I want to say it's uh like 12.
Talked to a company the other day, it's like an at-scale home service, and they're actively adding home installation. Apparently, it's like a very normal, it's not normal at all, like in Ohio. Like those two things are not the same thing. But in like Phoenix or Texas, Texas, probably, uh like HVAC companies, home insulation is a pretty core part of their offering. Is that like have you seen that a lot?
I haven't, but it's probably because people don't lead with uh that with me when they're talking to me.
It starts with an HVAC system and then add-on is yeah, home insulation, like attic installation.
That's interesting. I don't think I've seen a lot of that.
I thought I thought so too. Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's a big thing in Arizona. Uh Gettle did a ton of it. Um, there's a few other names that came up, but like, yeah, it was pretty interesting. I didn't have a ton of exposure to it because in Ohio that's not really like a thing.
All right. What else on LSAs do you think are important for people like operating in 2026?
So obviously we talked about the um uh understanding, you know, uh answering the phones is the big one. We obviously still see a lot of like missed calls being a a really big factor in um in that. Um I'd also say like understanding your numbers. So for so long, we've not been able to connect LSA uh back into your CRM. That is becoming less and less of a problem. Um and we can actually like in what way?
What's what's making it less of a problem?
Uh I mean, mostly because we can we can make the connection now. Uh we can pull in Okay, yeah. Yeah, with the way what we're doing from a technology standpoint, we're able to hook into what service tight and API. We can push into basically any CRM at this point and pull that data uh and start to match those phone numbers that are coming in uh and match those customers that are coming in to uh the uh revenue that you are. Actually, doing on the backside so that we can see is this actually a good return? Um, that's I mean, obviously the most important thing is knowing that your money is not just turning into leads, but it's turning into real dollars, and you have a ROS on the back end of that to make that um a worthwhile budget decision to keep investing in. So uh obviously that might be not be your first thing that you do as you're launching this in, but people that have been running this for a while, which should be most people at this point, really need to start dialing into is how much of a return am I getting from this LSA account?
Yeah, I think LSA, obviously, I showed everybody our ROI calculator earlier. LSA is typically like a six to eight for us. I'll have to check in by tr by plumbing. Um I do think probably one of the most important things you can do uh is like actually measuring ROI. I think we've talked about that probably a lot on this show. Question mark. But the faster you can start measuring LOI and like really attributing the leads to where they came from, I honestly don't know how I ran this business without that information. Like I don't know. Uh because it feels like it's so obvious, it's so necessary. Um I just don't know how I did it without that like very fundamental piece of information, which is like what marketing channels work.
Yeah, I mean it's something that in the past we've just let clients kind of like just not give us that information. And I'm starting to bully our clients a little bit uh into like, okay, I need this information because I want to prove to you that this is actually a good investment or not. If it's not a good investment, let's kill it and put that money in a better place. Um but like we are really pushing into I need that CRM data. And if you don't want to give us access to it, because sometimes you don't want to give a third party access to that CRM, at least pull a download so that we can we can show you um attribute those numbers. Um because we can definitely do it now. Yeah. Plumbing, you mentioned plumbing. Uh, interesting enough, plumbing is actually uh cost per lead has gone down uh year over year. So it was at $70 a lead, and now it's cost specifically on LSA or just aggregate? On LSA. Uh it was at 70 and now it's at $66 uh a lead, which you know is wild because in everything else, it's up. It's all going up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, have some of those numbers. Uh appliance repair has gone from $20 a lead to $34. Electrical has gone from $29 to $43, which that's a decent jump. Uh roofing has gone from $4 to 107. HVEC has gone from $51 to $60 a lead. And then uh again, plumbing has gone down from 70 to 66.
I feel like the people are more into plumbing than they were, I don't know, like a year ago. I feel like it's getting like way more airtime on like, hey, this is like there's less seasonality, the tickets are just as big. Like it's a good business. Um, so that is kind of interesting. Because I I like my context from the industry is more people are competing on plumbing right now. But maybe I'm wrong. I mean, maybe it's still just like HVAC.
Yeah, I mean, uh, I mean, I'm I'm seeing it just continu everything's getting more competition. People, you know, more people are getting into the market, more people are getting more sophisticated with their marketing. Um, I mean, specifically with AI, the things that you can do now. Um It's crazy. Like everyone's like, oh, okay, I uh I'm just I was I was talking to uh a couple kids that I call them kids. They're 24 years old, which means I've got a decade on these guys. Uh and it's two friends who have uh a hundred thousand dollar a month uh well and septic company. Uh and now they're they just bring them on the show.
That'll be fun. I actually talked to them about it.
And so I'd love to bring them on. Uh yeah, I love that. I'll I'll mess with I'll message them after this. Uh they just launched with us on Monday. Um and uh they just bought another company. And so they're about to combine, they're about to basically double and they wanted to get to five million as quickly as possible. I'm like, okay, let's go. I want to be a part of this. And so the cool part about talking to them is it's like a very different conversation. They're, you know, they're already doing a lot of stuff. I'm like, okay, because I'm talking to y'all, I want to can y'all be my guinea pig and let me just run with this? And they're like, yes. And so we're just we have so many ideas that we're coming up with on different thank you page. How can we add in more services? How do we can how can we? You're not like uh um not uh uh like services on like plumbing or HVAC, but like how do we make our speed delete even faster? Um stuff that like some people just don't want to play the game or don't have the capacity for. These kids, uh I call them kids, uh, they're adults. Uh and uh I mean they're they're just open to that idea, which is just fun. Like for me, it's fun to play around with the technology and see how far we can push uh the the limits of new business and new opportunities, new ways that we can actually drive more leads. So uh I'm really excited to be working with them.
Yeah, fuck yeah. That sounds awesome. That sounds like a fun group. Oh, yeah. This was good, man. I don't feel like I have anything else. I mean, I think we can probably do another one in like a month or two, and I'll try to actually bring Jesse so we can start really rolling into like what did change, what happened, and then um if you haven't had it all say to your business like I hate you, and I'm really jealous of you, and I'm green with envy. Uh, you should go turn it on. It is the easiest way to add a lot of leads for cheap. Yeah. All right, thanks everybody for tuning in. If you liked more, make sure you check out ownedandoperated.com.
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