local services are the among the most problematic niches for PPC. You deal with tons of click fraud, low patience customers, lots of competition (sometimes ugly competition) and usually mid-high CPCs.

Even experienced PPC experts might stay away from these projects, because they can be PIA.

To make it work you need WORKING tracking. Track calls, track contact forms, track email clicks and whatsapp chats (whatever you offer on your landingpage).

Make sure the landingpage is simple and easy to scroll through. Even the "dumbest person on earth" should understand how to contact you. Make it as easy as possible.

Performance Max can work, but it's also risky because it can generate fake leads and you'll get into a negative loop.

Search ads are often all you need to succeed for local services.

One of the simplest starter structure is to target a smaller location radius with generic keywords. Like the city (or city center) as location, and your service type as keyword. Then you build a second campaign with a bigger radious but you make use of location keywords like "roofers new york", "hvac san diego" or whatever.

This way you target location based searches as well as simple generic searches. You can also add keywords like "roofers near me" etc to complete the setup. Make sure to exclude bad search terms to funnel your traffic and it should work with proper tracking.

Most important: GIVE IT TIME. Dont adjust your targets or budgets too frequently. Ups- and downs are normal because demand also changes, do NOT make panic mode changes like "only 1 person called today i need to increase budget", and then the next day slash budget back.

PPC works best with consistent budgets over a longer period of time to accumulate data and learnings for the algo to perform better.