On a local account the budget is small enough that waste is visible within days. The work that matters is tight geography, an aggressive negative keyword list, ad scheduling around when you can actually answer the phone, and honest call tracking. Everything else is secondary until those four are right.
Geography is the first lever and the commonest mistake
Targeting settings decide whether your ads show to people in your area or merely to people showing interest in it, and the difference on a small budget is most of the money. Set the radius to the area you will actually travel to, exclude the rest, and review the location report monthly to see where clicks are really coming from. A national default on a local account will spend the month in a fortnight.
Negatives are the ongoing job
Local searches attract job seekers, students, DIY researchers and people looking for the free version of what you sell. The search terms report is where a manager earns the fee: read it weekly at first, add negatives, and keep a shared list across campaigns. An account whose negative list has not grown in a quarter is an account nobody has read.
Schedule the ads around the phone
Most local conversions are calls, and a call that rings out is a paid click thrown away. Run ads when someone answers, or put a proper out-of-hours path in place before running them outside those windows. Call extensions and call-only campaigns are worth using where the phone is the real conversion, provided the calls are actually tracked.
Track the call, or measure nothing
Form fills are easy to count and are a minority of local conversions. Use call tracking that reports duration so short misdials do not count as leads, and agree a definition of a qualified call before the first invoice. Quality score, impression share and click cost are diagnostics; the number to manage against is cost per qualified call.
Questions people ask about local ppc management
What is a realistic minimum monthly spend?
Enough to gather data in your cost per click, which in most trades means a budget that buys at least a few hundred clicks a month. Below that, decisions are guesses.
Should management fees be a percentage of spend?
On small local accounts a flat fee is usually fairer, because a percentage of a small budget cannot pay for the weekly work while a percentage of a large one overpays for it.
Is search or performance-max better locally?
Start with search, where the intent and the search terms report are visible. Automated campaign types can work but give you less to manage on a small budget.
How quickly should a new account improve?
Waste should fall within the first fortnight through negatives and geography. Cost per lead usually settles after a couple of months of data.