📪 HH #111: What No One Tells You About Your Junk Removal Google Ads Budget

TL;DR

Your Google Ads budget buys chances, not jobs. Each click = a shot at a conversation; in home services, leads often cost $25–$100, so $1,000 ≈ ~20 chances.

Results swing because searchers share the same keywords but have different intent (browsers, price-shoppers, small jobs, big clean-outs).

When your daily budget is spent, your chances stop—the next great lead won’t see you. Ads can’t fix a weak landing page; message, trust cues, and forms must make action effortless.

Pro management matters: block junk, refine keywords/bids daily, test, and track what actually booked. Your role: answer fast, follow up, report outcomes, and play the long game—consistency compounds.

Bottom line: You’re buying visibility and momentum; keep the system clean, funded, and responsive to win the right clicks.

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Why Your Junk Removal Google Ads Budget Doesn’t Always Equal Booked Jobs

— and What You Need to Know Before Blaming the Campaign

I was talking to a client the other day, breaking down their junk removal Google Ads budget and painting a picture of how this whole thing really works.

It always starts the same way: They want to grow. They’re ready to spend money. But they don’t fully understand how the system works.

And that’s fair — most business owners were never taught how digital ads actually function. They just see the charge hit their card and assume it should equal jobs.

But it doesn’t.

So here’s what I told them — and if you’re running ads now or thinking about it, this will probably change the way you see your budget forever.

Let’s Start With the Basics: Your Budget = Your Chances

When you run Google Ads, your budget doesn’t buy you booked jobs. It buys you chances.

Each click is a potential interaction with a real person who searched for your service — someone who might be ready to book, or might just be window shopping.

And once your campaign is properly dialed in, you’ll start to get a clear picture of what each of those chances (conversions) costs.

Those conversions — a phone call, form fill, or quote request — usually run between $25 and $100 per lead, depending on your area and how competitive your market is.

So if you’re spending $1,000 a month and your average cost per conversion is $50…You’re getting about 20 chances that month.

That’s 20 opportunities for a conversation.

That's 20 doors you can knock on. 

That's 20 people who raised their hand saying, “I might need your service.”

That’s what your budget buys — opportunities.

What happens after that depends on what you do with them.

 

What I Can Control — and What I Can’t

As your campaign manager at Adimize.com, our job is to make those 20 chances as clean and qualified as possible.

That means we:

Make sure your ads only show for your services.

Block out irrelevant traffic.

Watch daily performance to cut what’s wasting money and double down on what’s working.

Protect your budget from clicks that will never turn into revenue.

But here’s the truth most people never hear:

We can’t control who’s searching. We can’t make someone be ready to book a big job. We can’t change their urgency or project size. We can’t force them to pick up the phone or have a higher budget.

All we can do is make sure the right type of person sees you first when they search something relevant.

That’s it.

And once that person clicks your ad — it’s all probability.

And keep in mind, this applies to my own hauling company as well. We deal with the same exact things as everyone else.

And also don't forget about your landing page! Even the best ads in the world can’t save a confusing page. If the message, layout, or lead form doesn’t build trust and make it easy to take action, you’re paying for clicks that never convert.

That’s why we constantly review user behavior to make sure your page is doing its job — turning attention into action.

 

The Luck Factor Nobody Talks About

Let’s say your campaign generates 10 conversions this month. That’s 10 opportunities to land new business.

But think about who those 10 people might be:

• Some are in the research phase, not ready to act.

• Some are price shopping or comparing multiple companies.

• Some will call three haulers and choose whoever answers first.

• Some only need a $99 mattress pickup.

• And a very few might be sitting on a $5,000 full-house clean-out.

The amazing thing is... all of them likely type the same search terms. You can’t tell Google, “Only show my ad to people who have a big job and a big budget.”

It doesn’t work that way. Search intent doesn’t discriminate. So one month, you might get a string of small jobs. The next month, you might land three big clean-outs back-to-back. 

And here’s what most people forget — once your daily budget’s gone, your chances are too. Whoever came through during that time is it. The next searcher (maybe your dream client or biggest job yet) you’ll never know, because your ad’s already off.

Your budget decides how many doors you get to knock on each day. Once it’s gone, those doors close.

Same campaign. Same setup. Same management.

The difference? Timing and luck. That’s what makes paid ads tricky.

But That Doesn’t Mean the Ads Aren’t Working

This is the part that frustrates a lot of business owners. They look at a slow month and say, “The ads didn’t work.” But the ads did work. They did their job. They got you visibility and clean traffic.

What didn’t work was the human factor — the timing, the customer’s intent, the random nature of who saw your ad that month.

Then the next month, when a high-value lead comes through and books a $2,000 job, you think, “Finally! The campaign’s fixed.”

But in reality, the campaign didn’t change. The searcher did.

Why Daily Optimization Still Matters

Now, that doesn’t mean all campaigns are created equal. There’s a huge difference between someone who runs ads right and someone who just sets them and forgets them. Daily management matters because search behavior shifts constantly.

That’s why we:

• Review your search terms every single day.

• Block wasteful clicks that eat up your budget.

• Adjust bids, test new ad copy, and duplicating campaigns (the duplicating goal is to let Google’s algorithm re-optimize from scratch, often improving performance by testing a clean version free from past data or limitations).

• Track form submissions and call quality via client communication.

• Watch how users move through your landing page to find leaks in conversion flow.

Because even though I can’t control who’s searching, I can control how efficient your system is when they do.

That’s where the pros separate themselves from the pack — by managing probability with precision.

 

The Market Sets the Floor — But You Can Find What’s Missed

Your cost per lead is shaped by the market, not the campaign manager. Google Ads is an auction. Every time someone searches for a service, hundreds of businesses compete for that same click. The area you serve, the demand in your market, and how aggressively others bid — all of it pushes the cost of each lead to a natural floor.

No one, no matter how good they are, can drop a market-average $70 conversion down to $10. That’s not how the system works.

But running incredibly efficient campaigns — with zero wasted spend, tight targeting, and daily adjustments — is how you stay closer to that floor than everyone else.

That’s how you stretch your budget and keep conversions predictable. 

We Don’t Follow Templates — We Build Around Gaps

Most people play it safe. They use the same tired “best practices,” chase the same obvious keywords, and report the same surface-level metrics month after month.

They follow what Google says to do — which doesn't always help but ALWAYS makes Google more money.

We go the other way and you should too. We test keywords that don’t show up on the industry cheat sheets.

We run controlled experiments across campaigns to see where competitors aren’t bidding (often times in my own company first before pushing it out to clients).

We analyze user intent and find the cracks in the system where real conversions hide.

We build strategy from creative problem-solving, not generically available Google templates.

That’s what “anti-agency” really means: We think independently. We test relentlessly. We ignore what the masses are copying and focus on what brings profit to your business, in your market, with your customers.

Strategy Can’t Beat the Market, But It Can Outsmart It

You can’t change what competitors bid, but you can change where and how you compete. That’s how smart marketers lower cost per lead without chasing vanity numbers. Through creative targeting, smarter keyword grouping, and relentless testing, you can find the profitable paths most overlook.

That’s why we call ourselves the anti-agency. We don’t blend in. We build systems that run lean, creative, and constantly evolving.

So What Should You Take From This?

If you’ve made it this far, here’s the single takeaway I want to burn into your brain: Your budget buys you opportunities, not results.

And not every opportunity will be perfect. Some people will just browse. Some will call three companies. Some will ghost you.

But some — the right ones — will be ready.

And when those people come along, your campaign needs to be tuned, visible, and still have budget left so you can win that click.

That’s the game.

You’re not buying jobs. You’re buying visibility and momentum — and when that’s managed with clarity and discipline, results compound.

 

Your Role as the Business Owner

This part’s important, and it’s where a lot of companies lose ground. You can’t just let the ads run and expect them to do everything... because they won't.

Here’s what you control:

• Answer your phone. Missed calls are missed opportunities. Look into AI voice agents so a call never goes to voicemail again. I created one to handle overflow and after-hours and launched it in my business via Service Hubb AI. Our close rate continues to climb.

• Respond fast. Leads go cold quickly. The faster you follow up, the higher your close rate. Speed to lead is REALLY important in home service industries.

• Track feedback. Tell your campaign manager which jobs came in, which didn’t, and why. Data sharpens everything ONLY when it is put back into the system.

• Stay patient. Marketing is momentum-based. A few off weeks don’t mean it’s not working — it just means probability hasn’t evened out yet.

You can’t shortcut the system. But you can maximize your odds.

Final Thought

If you’re running ads — or thinking about it — and expecting every dollar to turn into an instant booked job, you’re going to be mad as hell 🤣.

But if you see it for what it is — a well-managed system of probability, data, and discipline — you’ll realize Google Ads and digital marketing isn’t a gamble. It’s a controlled machine.

And the pros who treat it that way are the ones who scale predictably, year after year (and how I grew my company from $250k to $2m annually).

If you’re ready to start seeing your ad dollars work like that, make sure your setup’s clean, your tracking’s accurate, and your campaigns are built with intent.

And if you ever want a second opinion on your setup, I look at this stuff every day. Sometimes one small fix can turn “barely breaking even” into steady, profitable momentum.

Stay sharp, stay consistent — and keep your eye on the long game.

That's the Haulers' Edge ✌️

P.S. If you want me to take a look at your Google Ads setup, I’ll do a free account review. Sometimes one small tweak can save you hundreds and start turning clicks into real jobs. Just reply to this email, it's super simple.

Justin Hubbard

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