Emergency locksmiths · Sheffield, UK · 2026

I relaunched Google Ads after a suspension

The Sheffield branch of a London firm: lockouts and lock changes. Google had suspended its old Ads account, it had no Google Business Profile, and rogue traders in search were promising rock-bottom prices.

45%

of relevant enquiries became paid jobs in August

£29

cost per lead in August, even though clicks cost 3–4 times more over the summer

completed jobs in August

suspensions of the new account in three months

This case is anonymised: I don’t disclose the company name. Reports and correspondence are available on request.

BusinessEmergency lockouts, lock changes, door repairs

AreaSheffield and nearby towns: Barnsley, Chesterfield, Doncaster, Worksop

ChannelGoogle Ads, search

My roleGoogle Ads and tracking end to end, via an agency · May–August 2026

My part

Relaunch

A new account from scratch, business verification, the warm-up and the launch of three campaigns.

Analytics

Tag Manager, conversions, a weekly report that runs all the way to completed jobs, an audit of call tracking.

Client

Weekly reports and meetings with the owner, decisions on budget, reviews and the next month's target.

Google AdsGoogle Tag Managerlocal servicesrelaunch after suspensionend-to-end funnel to paymentUK

01 · Niche

An honest locksmith loses to whoever promises a lower price

Local search is full of rogue traders: they lure people in with a low price and charge far more on site. Someone locked out has no time to work out who is genuine.

Challenge 1 · competitors

Undercutting

Clicks in the niche are expensive and getting pricier: £2–4 in June, £8–14 in July and August.

Challenge 2 · Google

Under suspicion

Because of rogue traders, Google checks local services more strictly: business verification, risk of suspension.

Challenge 3 · trust

No Business Profile

The company is registered in London but works in Sheffield. The address verification code for Google Maps never arrived.

How competitors work: another firm's bill the client shared in the chat

£4,200

For replacing the mechanism in one door: call-out £120, “internal mechanism” £1,950, warranty £450, plus VAT.

02 · Relaunch

The old account was suspended, so I built a new one from scratch

In spring the agency spent three weeks unable to launch: Google had suspended the client’s previous account. I set up a new one by Google’s rules and passed advertiser verification.

SpringThree weeks without a launch: account suspended

Late MayA new account from scratch

Early JuneBusiness verification with a UK phone number

Warm-up weekA £7.50-a-day test campaign

Mid-JuneFull launch

A warm-up instead of a sprint

£7.50

A small campaign ran for a week at £7.50 a day. Google didn’t suspend it and the ads showed on target searches. Only then did I link the account to the agency and switch the budget on.

During the warm-up

Google Tag Manager on the site
conversions: calls from ads, taps on the phone number, form submissions
keywords, negative keywords, ads

03 · Launch

Three campaigns for three different searches

Someone locked out at night and someone planning a lock change type different searches — and are worth different bids.

Emergency, Sheffield

Locked out right now. The main campaign, £22.60 a day.

Emergency, nearby towns

The same searches in Barnsley, Chesterfield, Doncaster and Worksop. £9.40 a day.

Lock changes

Not urgent: locks and door repairs. £5.60 a day.

Scaling slowly: budget up 20% a week

Start, mid-June£38 a day

August£81 a day

A sharp budget jump resets Smart Bidding’s learning and can trigger another review. Every change was gradual, with an eye on the risk of suspension.

Why I didn’t test two landing pages straight away

14 leads a week is too few for a test

A split would give 7 per variant: the test would drag on for months and Smart Bidding would be learning from scraps.

Volume first, then A/B

I proposed raising the budget first, to reach 25–30 leads a week, and only then splitting traffic.

04 · Tracking

I tracked completed jobs, not clicks or calls

A locksmith gets paid for an opened lock, not for a call. From July I added a “jobs completed” column to the weekly report, based on the client's call log.

August: from enquiry to payment

57unique enquiries

53relevant: excluding car keys

24completed jobs

Google Ads saw only half the calls

6 of 13

A week in early August: 13 calls in the log, Google counted 6. Cost per lead in the account was £53.07, in reality £24.49. The rising “cost per lead” was a tracking error, not an ad failure.

What else the audit that week found

“24/7” didn’t match the ad schedule

The ads said “24 hour”, but they only ran during working hours. Evening and Sunday calls came in, just not from the ads.

The best day hit the budget cap

Mondays brought the cheapest leads and hit the daily budget every week.

The biggest loss wasn’t in the ads

Of 13 callers, 4 booked a job and 5 fell through because the technician was busy. That is a scheduling issue, not a bidding one.

Reviews where people read them

Yell, not Trustpilot

Without a Business Profile, trust is lower. Reviews go to Yell: Trustpilot is expensive at this volume, and emergency customers rarely ask about reviews.

Leads over the summer

137

from early June to the end of August, £28 each on average.

05 · Result

Nearly half of relevant enquiries became paid jobs

Enquiry → job

45%

Average for August. The last week: 50%.

Cost per lead

£39→£29

July → August. £28 on average over the summer, even though clicks got 3–4 times dearer. A relevant enquiry in August cost £31.

Suspensions

From the relaunch to the handover, while the budget doubled.

The client was happy and ready to scale. At the end of August I handed the account to agency colleagues, with tracking that worked and a clear target for the next month.

What I would do differently

Check the account currency first

The account was created in dollars, while a UK business counts in pounds. Google doesn’t let you change the currency after creation.

Reconcile calls with the log from week one

I only found the tracking gap in August. Until then the strategy was learning from half the signal.

Align ads with the technician's schedule earlier

Instead of pausing ads on the technician's days off, an ad schedule agreed in advance.

I don’t name the company or the people. Figures come from the weekly Google Ads reports and the client's call log for June–August 2026. The account ran in US dollars; amounts are converted to pounds at the monthly average ECB rate. Reports and correspondence are available on request.

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