Columbus buyers search from Dublin office parks, Westerville kitchens and Grove City warehouses, and each group behaves differently in the ad auction. We audit your Google Ads account for free, send a written PDF within 24 hours, and then a senior project manager pairs you with a paid search specialist who fits your category and service area.
Free, no obligation. A senior project manager walks you through the analysis.
Free analysis in 24 hours
Send us your website. Within 24 hours, you'll get a written analysis comparing your marketing with your competitors'.
Free marketing analysis
Your analysis is prepared by a senior project manager with 15+ years of experience in marketing.
Key takeaways
Before you read on
What to know
Central Ohio is not a single market. Franklin County holds the urban core, but a large share of household demand now sits in Delaware County to the north, Licking County to the east and Fairfield County to the southeast. A roofer in Pickerington, an HVAC outfit in Hilliard and a law office near the Short North can all be bidding on overlapping phrases while serving very different customers. Accounts that treat the whole region as one blob tend to pay for clicks from people they will never drive to.
Home services, personal injury, healthcare practices, insurance agents and B2B suppliers to logistics and manufacturing firms all draw heavy interest here. Many of those searches also trigger national advertisers with deep pockets, so an independent company needs sharper keyword choices and tighter geography rather than simply raising bids.
Furnace repair spikes with the first hard freeze, lawn and pool queries wake up in spring, and the student calendar around campus changes traffic for rentals, food and retail. Fall weekends with home football games shift behavior across the city too. A good account plans budgets and ad copy around these swings instead of reacting after the phones go quiet.
Who it's for
These are the situations we hear most often from companies in the region that want Google Ads to produce booked work rather than traffic reports.
Plumbers, roofers, remodelers and HVAC companies often serve Westerville one day and Grove City the next. They need location settings by ZIP or county, call assets scheduled to office hours, and separate ad groups for emergency and planned jobs so a midnight burst pipe call is not priced like a quote request for a new deck.
Clinics in Dublin, Upper Arlington or Gahanna want new patients for specific procedures. Health advertising carries restrictions on remarketing and sensitive audiences, so the account relies more on intent keywords, careful landing pages and conversion tracking that does not pass patient details into ad platforms.
B2B firms along the logistics corridors south and west of town sell to engineers and buyers with long decision cycles. Their campaigns need narrow part and capability keywords, lead forms that capture company details, and offline conversion imports so the account learns which inquiries turned into real quotes.
Agencies and lenders face strict wording rules and a very crowded auction. They benefit from tight negative keyword lists, clear disclosures on landing pages and Performance Max setups that are fenced in so the budget does not drift into low quality placements.
Side by side
It starts with good intentions and a smart campaign suggested by Google itself. Over time broad match keywords wander, the location setting stays on presence or interest, and nobody checks search terms. Spend continues while the phone rings less, and the owner rarely has the hours to find out why.
A web designer or social media helper often adds Google Ads to the list. They can launch campaigns, but bidding strategy, conversion value rules and offline imports are usually beyond their daily practice, so the account gets set up once and then left alone while the auction around it keeps changing.
A senior project manager reviews your audit, your service area and your sales process, then brings in a specialist who already runs accounts in similar categories. The specialist handles builds and weekly optimization, while the manager keeps priorities, reporting and your questions in one place.
Good to know
Most wasted spend we see in the region comes from a handful of settings. Location options left on people who show interest in Columbus pull in clicks from travelers and students who live elsewhere. Search partners and display expansion quietly absorb budget. Conversion goals count page views or button taps as leads, which teaches automated bidding to chase the wrong people.
A clean build separates campaigns by service and by geography when the economics differ, adds negative keywords for jobs you do not take and for the free or DIY crowd, and schedules call assets for the hours someone actually picks up. Performance Max gets brand exclusions and audience signals from real customer lists. Remarketing, where policy allows it, focuses on visitors who reached a quote page but did not submit.
Measurement is where many Ohio accounts fall short. We connect form submissions and tracked calls to your CRM or a simple spreadsheet, then import qualified outcomes back to Google so bidding learns from signed work, not from every phone call about a wrong number.
Step by step
Step 1
You share read access to your Google Ads account or describe your situation if you have none. Within 24 hours you receive a written PDF with the settings, keywords and tracking gaps we found, sorted by how much each one likely affects your lead flow.
Step 2
A senior project manager studies the audit, your target suburbs and your sales cycle, then assigns a paid search specialist with matching experience. Together you agree which services, counties and conversion goals come first, and what stays out of scope for now.
Step 3
The specialist restructures campaigns, fixes location options, writes new ads and assets, sets up call and form tracking, and starts offline conversion imports. Early weeks focus on cleaning search terms daily while bidding gathers reliable data.
Step 4
Each month the project manager walks you through leads by service and area, what they cost, which search terms converted and what changes come next. Decisions are made on qualified inquiries and closed jobs, not on impressions.
Checklist
The first conversation moves faster when a few details are ready, especially for companies that serve more than one part of the metro.
Checklist
The details
Our specialists work online, so geography matters only for targeting, not for collaboration. Calls happen by video on Eastern Time, account changes are logged in writing, and the dashboard shows the same numbers the project manager discusses with you. If you need a quick change before a holiday rush or a storm, you message one person who knows your account.
You can read how the Google Ads management service is structured across Search, Performance Max and remarketing, or look at our wider coverage of the state on the Ohio locations page. When you are ready, the free analysis is the first step.
FAQ
Short answers. The free analysis call covers anything specific to your company.
No, there is no Columbus office to visit. Our people are spread out and work remotely. Your kickoff and each monthly review take place by video, booked in Eastern Time so they fit your workday, and every bid change, new ad and tracking fix happens online inside your own Google Ads account, where you can watch it.
That depends on where your profitable jobs come from. Many service companies get cleaner leads by listing specific suburbs or counties such as Delaware or Fairfield rather than a wide radius. We look at your past customer addresses and drive times, then set location targeting so the budget follows the areas that actually convert.
Our senior project manager makes it, drawing on 15+ years spent in marketing roles. After studying your audit, margins and service area, they bring in a paid search specialist suited to your category, so there are no profiles for you to sift. From then on you deal with that one manager, who sets the scope and checks the account before every monthly review.
It can be, once conversion tracking is trustworthy. Without clean goals, Performance Max tends to drift toward low value display placements. We usually start with Search to gather solid lead data, then introduce Performance Max with brand exclusions, customer list signals and asset groups built per service.
Expect the first weeks to focus on cleanup: negative keywords, location fixes and tracking repair. Automated bidding generally needs a steady flow of conversions before it settles, so meaningful trends in cost per lead usually become visible over the following months rather than in the first few days.
Free analysis
Send us your website. Within 24 hours, you'll get a written analysis comparing your channels with your competitors', plus a call with a senior project manager who has run marketing for 15+ years.
Free marketing analysis
Your analysis is prepared by a senior project manager with 15+ years of experience in marketing.
Are you a marketer with experience in a specific industry? Join the team
Your website, full name, email and phone. A PDF with specifics within 24 hours.
Within 24 hours you get an audit by email with an analysis and a proposal: which marketer or team your business needs and where to start.