Few advertising options have become as powerful for towing businesses as Google Ads. Creating a profitable campaign on your own has become more challenging over the years, and for most business owners, simply taking a look inside of Google’s Ad Manager can be overwhelming. With decades of hands-on experience, the certified Google Ads team at OMG Tow Marketing thought it might be helpful to provide some of the warning signs to be on the lookout for, should you be managing ads on your own, or through an inexperienced agency. There are so many things to look out for if you want to have the best chance of driving consistent, quality new leads and cash calls for your towing company, here are just a few!

1. Lack of the use of negative keywords. Ensuring your towing business is targeting the right traffic and generating calls for areas and service calls you’re seeking. Filtering out unwanted traffic is among the top complaints we hear about Google Ads. If you are looking for heavy-duty service calls and have not yet implemented negative keywords, it is likely that the keywords you are using will be drawing in clicks from unrelated and unwanted searches. Evaluating those search terms is important, as any trends you see (a search term which triggered your ad more than once) are wasteful and expensive and at OMG Tow Marketing, we have years of data and an extensive library of negative keywords to be implemented to each campaign depending on the specific goals and objectives of each to ensure that you aren’t repeating that same costly debit.
2. Not Using Conversion Tracking. Showing up in the right place and even getting clicks is not enough, if you aren’t tracking through to the conversion, you can’t effectively measure your campaign’s performance. The conversion might be a phone call, perhaps even a messaging engagement or instant booking and whatever your conversion is for your tow business model, being able to track and review reporting from the impression to the click and through to the conversion, is the only way to truly know how your campaign is truly performing.
3. Weak or poorly constructed landing pages. If you’re dropping potential customers from your ads to your website’s home page, or even a services page on your website, your campaign is likely underperforming. Towing is an emergency service and you want that landing page to “squeeze” the consumer, making it easy to understand what they can expect next and encouraging them to follow through to that call. Your landing page quality is a critical element of your success in Google Ads and should reinforce the ad’s message and move your customer through the sales funnel and over to a conversion as quickly as possible.
4. Bad Targeting Parameters. Quite frequently in reviewing campaigns for our towing clients, we see that though they are doing business in a 15 or 20-mile radius around their area, targeting has been set up county wide, even state and nationwide. Mistakes made here, if not caught right away, can cost your company its entire month’s budget in a few hours and you’ll begin getting calls for tows in areas that you do not service. Google offers a detailed set of targeting options and at OMG Tow, we take it beyond simply geo-related targeting. Working with a professional that can interpret your goals and explain how that should translate in Google’s targeting setup is a critical piece to your Google Ads success and this is just one example of how it could save your company wasted money.
5. Ineffective Bidding. Though it is possible to handle bids manually at setup and through proper maintenance, AI-enabled (artificial intelligence) bidding allows your company to use machine learning to drive smart bids. Bidding is a huge part of Google ads and setting up a well-built campaign. Our technology at OMG Tow Marketing uses an algorithm to make decisions about your campaign and how it should adjust to deliver the highest yield and best allocation of your budget. Not only is it more effective, it’s more efficient, enabling your Paid Search Professional to have more time evaluating other aspects of your campaign. 

Working with a team of paid search professionals who live and breathe all things Google is your best bet, having experience in the towing industry is another plus. The AdWords system is extremely complex and working with a team of certified Google Experts is highly recommended as well. Google Ads are constantly evolving, from privacy related targeting restrictions, to security based campaign suspensions, you need to make sure that your Google Ads professional has the right stuff to leverage your towing campaign. These recommendations will have positive effects on your campaign now, and into the future.