Top 3 Types of Leads from Google Ads in the USA | Calls, Forms, Chats — What Works Best for Business Promotion

What constitutes a lead for a local business, how to properly qualify it, and which tools, including Google Ads LSA, to use for creating an effective sales funnel. You will learn in this article.

By Local Business, we understand businesses that operate in the Home Service sector: plumber, locksmith, handyman, and others. Google ads for plumbing works especially effectively, attracting targeted customers who need plumbing services.

A lead is an inquiry to our company, but we don’t need all leads, only qualified ones, also known as MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead).

Not every lead is a quality lead (MQL). A qualified lead is an inquiry to the company that meets 3 selection criteria:

1. Service match (service): the customer requests exactly the services that the company provides.
2. Geography (area): the customer is located in the company’s service area.
   If the lead is located too far away, or in our business sphere in some states a license may be required, for example, in your county where you provide your services, a license is not needed and you receive an inquiry from a neighboring county, but there a license or some additional type of insurance is required, etc., then such a lead is not suitable for us, you will get more problems than you will earn from this lead. Effective advertising on Google Maps will help to more accurately target the audience by geographic criteria.
3. Intent: the lead intends to use the service in the near future, not just inquire about prices.

It is important to promptly respond to inquiries, ask clarifying questions to understand the lead’s compliance with the above-mentioned MQL criteria and to filter out unqualified leads.

An effective sales funnel for local business includes three key stages:

1. Primary qualification: selection of requests based on the main criteria – service match, geography, readiness to buy. At this stage, it is important to understand Google Ads costs 2025 to correctly calculate the cost of lead acquisition.
2. Consultation or site visit: organization of a meeting, measurement, inspection, or consultation. In some cases (for example, emergency repairs), an immediate transition to the deal is possible.
3. Closing the deal: after successful verification and discussion of all details, the lead becomes a customer.

In local marketing, three main channels of lead generation are distinguished, each of which has its own nuances:

The company’s website has an input form where a potential customer leaves their data: name, phone number, and other information.

Features of forms:

• Asynchrony: the customer leaves a request on the website, but the company’s response does not always come immediately.
• Long processing time: if the response is delayed, the customer may go to competitors. For example, if a person’s door lock is broken and they cannot get home, they will not wait in the cold for 2 days while you find their request and give an answer. They need to be contacted right now.
• Ignoring calls: this is exacerbated by the fact that people often do not answer calls from unknown numbers, which reduces the effectiveness of communication. You have noticed yourself how the amount of phone spam in America has increased, which has created the habit of not answering unknown phone numbers.
• Spam requests: forms can be filled out by bots; various captchas are added to protect against them, but this can irritate regular users.
• How to improve the quality of leads through forms: if it is appropriate in your business to ask clarifying questions, for example, you are an auto locksmith, then it is quite appropriate to ask additional questions in the form besides the phone and name fields, for example, about the car brand, year of manufacture, key type, etc. But it is important to be careful with adding new form fields, as each additional input field reduces conversion.

In our work, there was a case when a form on the website had as many as 22 fields; we reduced their number to 4, and the conversion rate for requests increased significantly.

• Readiness for dialogue (high intent): users who contact through chat are more often inclined to discuss the details of your services.
• Need for quick responses: after writing in the chat, the customer expects that an operator will start communicating with them soon; if the chat operator does not respond in time, the customer loses interest.
• Sales in chat: the operator must not only inform about all the details and answer the lead’s questions but also be able to sell directly in the correspondence.

The highest quality type of leads for Local Business. Calls have advantages over other types of leads:

• High level of interest: if a customer has called, they have such a high need for your service that they decided to call right now to contact you.
• Live communication: the operator immediately clarifies details, addresses objections, and arranges the next steps (consultation, appointment, inspection, site visit, measurement).

How to deal with spam calls: IVR systems help filter out unwanted calls.

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) is an auto-answering system that offers the user to select the desired section using voice commands or telephone keys.

For example, in some states, there is a very large share of Spanish-speaking population; during a call, the system can use keys to offer such a lead to choose the operator’s language: press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish. Let’s say the lead only knows Spanish, and after pressing key 2, they will be redirected to a Spanish-speaking operator.

It is important to understand that sometimes such anti-spam systems reduce conversion. Before implementation, this decision needs to be carefully considered; perhaps your operators can solve lead problems on their own without implementing such technologies.

Effective lead management is a key factor in the success of local businesses in the USA. It is important not only to attract potential customers but also to properly qualify them, ensuring high conversion into real deals. Using various channels – request forms, online chats, and calls – allows you to reach different audience segments, while integrating all methods of communication on the site increases convenience for customers.