Ann Arbor PPC Campaigns Built to Turn Clicks Into Customers
More phone calls and booked work from Google search, and now from AI search too.
Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Meta campaigns for Ann Arbor service businesses, engineered around the only metric that pays back: revenue per booked lead, not click volume.
Latest case study below: +76% Google Ads conversions on a 2.29% spend increase.
- Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, LinkedIn. Every channel where the cost-per-lead math closes
- Conversion tracking wired to your CRM, not just Google Ads (GA4 + CallRail + offline imports)
- Dedicated landing pages per intent. The home page is not a landing page
- Monthly reporting tied to leads and revenue. Google Partner. 5.0 across 30+ Google reviews
Partner
How a 78-year-old Gulf Coast glass company drove 76% more Google Ads conversions on a 2.29% spend increase.
Ann Arbor service businesses face an auction shaped by the University of Michigan research orbit, Michigan Medicine’s healthcare gravity, a Toyota Tech Center engineering base, and a Washtenaw County buyer pool that reads ad copy critically. The Dixie Glass campaign shows what disciplined PPC management does to that math.
Dixie Glass, a third-generation Mississippi Gulf Coast glass company in business since 1946, came to Lithium with Google Ads campaigns that were spending without producing tracked conversions. We rebuilt the campaigns around proper conversion tracking, tightened the keyword and match-type strategy, deployed dedicated landing pages, and wired CallRail through to GA4. Over twelve months, on only a 2.29 percent ad spend increase, Google Ads conversions climbed 76 percent and the campaign conversion rate landed at 15.57 percent.
DIXIE GLASS — GOOGLE ADS REBUILD
Three things Ann Arbor PPC programs miss that we don't.
Ann Arbor's university and research buyer pool scrutinizes ad copy.
The University of Michigan, Michigan Medicine, and Toyota Tech Center put tens of thousands of academic, medical, and engineering professionals in the buyer pool. They scrutinize claims and ignore generic marketing language. We write ad copy that names a specific service, a specific neighborhood, and a real offer instead of leaning on adjectives. Quality Score lifts come from message-match, not bid increases.
Ann Arbor splits sharply by neighborhood.
Burns Park, Old West Side, Kerrytown, and North Campus behave like four distinct submarkets with different incomes, housing stock, and buyer mixes (student-heavy versus faculty-heavy versus residential). An ad campaign that bids the same on all four leaks budget badly. We use suburb-level geo-targeting and ad-copy variation.
Ann Arbor PPC math closes on cost per booked lead, not impressions.
Healthcare CPCs run hot because Michigan Medicine bids hard on procedural keyword sets, and academic-year seasonality reshapes demand twice a year. We report leading indicators weekly during launch, then leads, cost per lead, and revenue every month, tied to the CRM. The strategy call is built around what actually closed.
Ranking for queries that do not convert
In Ann Arbor, where Bay Area business-services CPCs run $7 to $12, every wasted click is a measurable dollar lost. Lithium’s PPC programs are built around the cost-per-lead math first, click volume second.
Technical debt blocking growth
Service-business buyers prefer to tap a phone number rather than navigate a menu to find one. A site missing a click-to-call link in the hero, and a sticky mobile bar that keeps it within thumb reach during scroll, loses the calls you paid to earn through ads.
Generic content that says nothing local
A PPC campaign without proper conversion tracking, dedicated landing pages, and negative-keyword discipline is invisible in your CRM dashboard. The clicks may be there, the impressions may be there, but the booked work is flat. That is where most of the Ann Arbor ad spend silently leaks.
No measurement tied to revenue
Buyers decide whether to keep scrolling in about five seconds. A site that shows no reviews, no project photos, no service-area clarity, and no trust signal in the hero loses every time to a competitor who placed a single five-star rating in the right spot.
Eight things we ship inside every Ann Arbor PPC retainer, not as upsells.
An Ann Arbor PPC program needs every line item in this list working together. The University of Michigan academic-year seasonality, the Michigan Medicine healthcare auction pressure, the Toyota Tech Center engineering buyer pool, and the Burns Park versus North Campus submarket spread all reward disciplined architecture.
Conversion tracking, properly wired
GA4 events on every form and click-to-call. CallRail call tracking with call quality scoring. Server-side conversion imports for Google Ads. Offline-conversion imports from your CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, GoHighLevel). The algorithm cannot optimize toward leads it cannot see.
Dedicated landing pages per intent
Landing pages built for the buyer behind the keyword, not the home page. Single offer above the fold, tap-to-call thumb-zone-friendly, one form, one CTA, and a load time under 2.5 seconds on a mid-tier Ann Arbor mobile network. Every high-intent keyword cluster gets its own page.
Keyword strategy + match-type discipline
Keywords mapped to buyer intent (research, comparison, decision) and tied to estimated revenue per lead. Match-type discipline that prevents broad-match drift from eating budget on the wrong queries. Monthly negative-keyword review from the search-terms report.
Ad copy + Responsive Search Ads
Ad copy that names the actual service, not “quality work.” Responsive Search Ads with the maximum asset count, manual headline pinning where intent demands it, sitelinks tuned to Ann Arbor buyer language, and structured asset extensions. Every variant tagged for A/B analysis.
Geo-targeting + audience layering
Geo-targeting at the suburb level, not the metro level. Bid modifiers tuned to your actual conversion data across the neighborhoods you serve. Audience layering with in-market segments, remarketing pools, and customer-match uploads from your CRM. The right click, the right place, the right time, at the right bid.
Bid management + remarketing
Manual control on high-intent keywords, Google’s tCPA and tROAS automation where the data supports it. Remarketing audiences segmented by funnel stage, with display, YouTube, and Discovery campaigns layered on top of search for Ann Arbor buyers who clicked but did not convert. The full funnel, not just the first click.
Reporting tied to revenue, not vanity
Looker Studio dashboard updating daily on impressions, clicks, conversions, conversion rate, and ROAS by campaign and ad group. Call quality scored and reviewed monthly. Monthly written report ties everything back to leads delivered, cost per lead, and revenue. The same numbers Lithium uses internally to manage your program.
Optimization cadence that pays back
Daily monitoring during the first 30 days, weekly after that. Bid adjustments, ad copy rotations, and budget reallocations happen on real data: search-terms reports, conversion data by ad group, landing-page conversion rate, device and audience performance. Every change is logged and tied to a measurable outcome.
The verticals where our Ann Arbor PPC playbook turns clicks into customers most reliably.
Ann Arbor’s economy splits between the University of Michigan research orbit and the tens of thousands of students, faculty, and staff that come with it, the Michigan Medicine healthcare gravity, the tech and engineering base anchored by Toyota Tech Center and a thick layer of UM-spun startups, and the residential service market across Burns Park, Old West Side, and Kerrytown. These are the verticals where our PPC programs deliver the most consistent cost-per-lead math.
HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing trades in Ann Arbor serve a wide range of housing stock, from the early 20th century Old West Side bungalows to Burns Park Tudors and the modern North Campus condos. Michigan winters drive emergency furnace and ice-dam roofing volume; the older housing stock keeps trades busy year-round. We build emergency-intent call-only campaigns, suburb-level geo-targeting across the four core neighborhoods, and tap-to-call landing pages that load under 2.5 seconds on mid-tier mobile. Cost per lead typically lands $70 to $145 once optimized.
Independent dental and medical practices in Ann Arbor operate in the orbit of Michigan Medicine, one of the country’s largest academic medical systems, and the St. Joseph Mercy Health System. Both bid hard on procedural keywords. We run procedure-specific ad groups, insurance-friendly landing pages (UM employees have specific carrier networks that matter), and conversion tracking through booking platforms. Practices that try to outbid Michigan Medicine on broad terms lose every time. The path is tight ad groups and high Quality Score.
General contractors and builders working Ann Arbor handle a mix of historic-preservation work in Old West Side (the historic district has real architectural review constraints), Burns Park whole-house renovations, kitchen-and-bath remodels across the residential neighborhoods, and the occasional commercial project tied to the campus expansion. We run project-type ad groups, image and YouTube creative with real Ann Arbor project photography, and quote-form landing pages with realistic price-range expectation setting.
Ann Arbor attorneys handle a heavy mix of family law (a transient academic and medical workforce drives volume), estate planning for high-income faculty households, university-related employment law, intellectual property tied to the UM spinout ecosystem, and personal injury along the I-94 corridor. We run practice-area campaigns tied to real buyer intent, write ad copy that meets Michigan State Bar advertising rules, and tie consultation-booking landing pages to CallRail.
Ann Arbor’s restaurant scene clusters around Main Street downtown, the State Street campus corridor, Kerrytown, and the Liberty Street stretch. Buyer behavior swings sharply with the academic calendar. Football Saturdays at Michigan Stadium fundamentally reshape demand. We build local-intent search campaigns, OpenTable or Resy conversion tracking where it applies, event-driven campaign scheduling tied to the UM athletic calendar, and geo-fenced ad groups around campus and the stadium during peak periods.
Auto repair, body shops, and detailing in Ann Arbor handle a customer base heavy on imports (the faculty-and-staff demographic skews that way), plus the standard Michigan winter undercarriage and rust work. We run emergency-intent call-only campaigns, OEM-specific ad groups (the BMW, Audi, Toyota, and Subaru ad groups all run hot), parts-and-labor landing pages, and dynamic call extensions during shop hours. Geo-targeting extends to Ypsilanti and Saline.
Ann Arbor’s specialty retail spans Main Street downtown, Kerrytown’s farmers-market-anchored district, State Street’s campus-focused independents, and the Briarwood Mall area. We run Google Shopping campaigns with product feeds, local-inventory ads, store-visit conversion tracking, and remarketing audiences segmented by product category. Performance Max handles awareness; manual search captures the high-intent decision.
Ann Arbor’s B2B service economy is dominated by University of Michigan research-services vendors, the Michigan Medicine healthcare-services supply chain, Toyota Tech Center and the broader automotive-engineering tier, and the substantial layer of UM-spun startups in biotech, software, and clean energy. Sales cycles are long and procurement-driven. We run LinkedIn-paired Google Ads campaigns, gated-content lead-gen funnels, and long-cycle attribution wired through HubSpot or Salesforce. Cost per qualified opportunity matters more than cost per first-touch click.
From audit to optimized campaigns, with weekly check-ins through the first month.
Profitable PPC is a compounding system, not a one-time launch. The Lithium process starts with an audit and conversion-tracking rebuild, then ships campaign optimizations on a weekly cadence with monthly reporting that ties impressions to booked work.
Audit and strategy
We pull your Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, GA4, CallRail, and CRM data and audit your current campaigns against impression share, conversion rate, quality score, and search-terms waste. We map your service mix, real Ann Arbor buyer journeys, and revenue per lead. You receive an audit deliverable in week one with priorities ranked by impact.
Conversion infrastructure
Before we touch ad copy, we wire conversion tracking properly. GA4 events on every form and click-to-call, CallRail through to Google Ads, server-side conversion imports, and offline-conversion imports from your CRM. The algorithm cannot optimize toward leads it cannot see, so this gets done first or everything else compounds slower.
Campaign build
Ad groups structured by buyer intent, ad copy with the maximum Responsive Search Ads asset count, dedicated landing pages built for each high-intent keyword cluster, geo-targeting at the suburb level (tuned to the neighborhoods you actually serve), and a baseline negative-keyword list. Every campaign launches with a 30-day optimization plan already mapped.
Launch and learning phase
We build your Ann Arbor campaigns from the ground up: ad groups by intent, ad copy with the maximum Responsive Search Ads asset count, sitelinks tuned to Ann Arbor buyer language, geo-targeting at the suburb level, and dedicated landing pages for the highest-intent keywords. Every campaign launches with a baseline negative-keyword list and a 30-day optimization plan already mapped.
Ongoing optimization
Daily monitoring during the first 30 days, weekly after that. We optimize on search-terms reports, conversion data by ad group, landing-page conversion rate, device and audience performance, and quality score drift. Bid adjustments, ad copy rotations, and budget reallocations happen on real data, not gut feel. Every change is logged and tied to a measurable outcome.
Measurement and monthly iteration
Monthly written report tied to leads, cost per lead, and revenue from paid search. Strategy call with DJ Van Zanten to set the next month’s priorities. The strategy adjusts every thirty days based on what is actually moving the phone in Ann Arbor. Not what looks good on a vanity chart.
What a Ann Arbor service-business owner actually gets, by PPC approach.
Transparent pricing. Management starts at $500/month, separate from your ad spend.
Typical Ann Arbor service businesses run $500 to $1,500 per month in management on top of $2,000 to $5,000 in monthly ad spend. Pricing scales with monthly ad spend, channel count (Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn), and how much landing-page production work the campaign needs. You will see the math on the first call. No haggling, no hidden upsells.
Service businesses Lithium runs PPC for.
Willard Power Vac
“Lithium Marketing has been amazing for our business. They have greatly increased our web traffic and helped us land hundreds of jobs.”
Drake’s 7 Dees
“Cost per lead is down, lead quality is up, and the monthly reports actually mean something. Lithium runs our Google Ads like they own the business.”
Rickabaugh Construction
“Working with Lithium Marketing has been awesome.”
Ann Arbor PPC, straight answers.
A properly built Ann Arbor campaign starts producing tracked conversions within the first week of launch. The first 30 days are a learning phase where the algorithm calibrates on real Washtenaw County data and we account for the academic-calendar seasonality that defines this market. Cost per lead typically stabilizes by month two and improves through month three as negative lists tighten and landing pages get conversion-rate-tested. We report weekly during the first month, monthly after that.
Ann Arbor CPCs run on the high side of mid-tier nationally. Most service verticals sit in the $5 to $12 range, healthcare pushes $15 to $30 because Michigan Medicine bids hard, and legal runs $15 to $35 in higher-value practice areas. The buyer pool is wealthy (Ann Arbor median household income runs well above the Michigan state median, with high faculty and medical-staff concentration) and decision-ready. PPC works in Ann Arbor when ad copy speaks to actual neighborhoods and the campaign architecture handles the academic-year seasonality. Properly run Ann Arbor campaigns deliver cost per leads under $130 in trades, under $275 in legal.
Management starts at $500 per month, separate from your ad spend. Typical Ann Arbor service businesses run $500 to $1,500 per month in management on top of $2,000 to $5,000 in monthly ad spend. The number depends on monthly ad spend, channel count (Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn), and how much landing-page production work the campaign needs.
No reputable PPC agency guarantees a specific cost per lead, because both are controlled by the auction, the season, and your offer. What we guarantee is the work: conversion tracking shipped properly, dedicated landing pages per intent, monthly negative-keyword review (Ann Arbor needs filtering against Ypsilanti and the broader Detroit-metro spillover depending on the campaign), weekly bid optimization, and reporting tied to revenue per lead. The cost-per-lead curve bends downward when the work is done right.
Quality Score is Google’s estimate of how relevant your ad and landing page are to the keyword. It directly affects your cost per click and ad position. We optimize Quality Score on three vectors: expected click-through rate (better ad copy, headline pinning where intent demands it), ad relevance (tight ad-group themes, one core keyword set per ad group), and landing-page experience (dedicated pages per intent, fast mobile load, message-match with the ad). A 7+ Quality Score on high-volume keywords often saves Ann Arbor clients 30 to 50 percent on cost per click compared to a 4 or 5.
Three layers. Leading indicators: impressions, clicks, click-through rate, Quality Score, search impression share in the Ann Arbor auction. Mid-funnel: conversion rate by ad group, conversion rate by landing page, call quality scoring. Revenue: leads delivered, cost per lead, ROAS, revenue attributed to paid via offline conversion imports from your CRM. The dashboard updates daily and the written report ships monthly with a strategy call that accounts for academic-calendar effects.
Daily campaign monitoring during the first 30 days (weekly after), bid and budget optimization, ongoing ad copy and creative testing, landing page conversion-rate optimization, monthly negative-keyword review tuned to the Ann Arbor geo, audience segmentation refinement (student versus faculty versus permanent-resident), call quality scoring, monthly reporting tied to leads and revenue, and a strategy call with DJ Van Zanten. Ann Arbor retainers above the base tier include landing page production and CRM offline-conversion wiring.
Yes. PPC is the fastest channel for a new Ann Arbor business because it does not depend on domain authority or review history, both of which compound slowly against entrenched Washtenaw County operators. A new business with a real offer, a clean landing page, and proper conversion tracking can produce tracked leads within the first week. We typically pair an aggressive PPC launch with a measured SEO build over the next six months so the blended cost per lead drops as earned visibility compounds.
Your Ann Arbor PPC strategy call is run by DJ Van Zanten, not handed to a junior account manager.
DJ Van Zanten joined Lithium as co-founder in 2018 and leads the strategic side of every client partnership. His approach is real-talk consulting: map out a simple, actionable plan, identify the revenue opportunities that matter most, and translate the technical work into business outcomes you can measure. Behind DJ on every Ann Arbor PPC program, co-founder Kurt Schell directs the technical and content execution, drawing on more than twenty years of SEO, PPC, and conversion-rate work. The strategy call you book is the actual call you take, with the person who will be calling the shots on what to prioritize, what to ignore, and how to measure progress.
Get a free 30-minute Ann Arbor PPC audit.
On the call we look at your current Ann Arbor PPC campaigns against impression share, conversion tracking depth, search-terms waste (Ypsilanti and Detroit-metro spillover are always there), landing-page conversion rate, and the actual cost per lead your CRM is recording. You leave with a specific 30-day plan, whether or not you decide to work with us. There is no slide deck and no sales pitch.
- No-obligation 30-minute call with DJ Van Zanten, not a junior
- Written priority list of the top 5 to 10 changes that will move leads
- Google Partner with a 5.0 rating across 30+ Google reviews