This isn’t an argument against Google Ads. Plenty of good contractors in Middle Tennessee run them, and the call from someone searching “emergency plumber Hendersonville” at 10 p.m. is a call worth having. It’s an argument about what each channel is for, because most of the money wasted in home-service marketing is spent asking one channel to do the other one’s job.
What you’re buying with a click
A search ad buys a place in an auction for one query at one moment. The homeowner has already decided they need the service and is comparing companies. Every roofer, plumber and remodeler who wants that customer bids on the same words, and the price of the click is set by that competition. You pay whether they call or not.
The magazine’s view of this is blunt: “Stop overpaying for expensive clicks that don’t convert.” The point isn’t that clicks never convert. It’s that you’re paying auction prices to meet someone who has also met your five closest competitors in the same search result.
What you’re buying with a page
A page in Nashville Home Pros buys a fixed place in front of 140,000 owner-occupied, single-family homes in one mailing, with at most one other company in your trade in that zone. There’s no auction and no bid to raise next month. The reader isn’t comparing you with anyone yet; they’re turning pages at the kitchen table. And the ad works whether or not anyone in the house needs you this month, which is exactly when a search ad can’t.
Trust is not evenly split
Surveys of what people trust when they buy put print ahead. MarketingSherpa’s 2016 survey of US consumers found 82% trusted print ads — newspapers and magazines — when making a purchase decision, against 61% for search-engine ads and 25% for online pop-ups (MarketingSherpa, 2016). Nielsen’s global study the year before put the same order on it: 58% trusted ads in magazines, 47% search-engine ads and 42% online banners (Nielsen, 2015).
They work better together
The best reason to run both is that print makes search cheaper. A homeowner who saw your name in the magazine doesn’t search for “roofer near me”; they search for you. That query has far fewer bidders on it, and you’re the obvious answer. So the ad in the magazine should always carry the phone number and the website — it sends the reader to both.
If you’re deciding where next year’s budget goes, start with the sizes and the deadlines, and read the brand-awareness feature for the case behind the annual contract.