Key takeaways
- Your Google Ads account, billing, conversion data and call-tracking numbers should all sit in your business name.
- Urgent tows and planned long-distance or heavy-duty jobs need separate campaigns, ads and destinations.
- The ad schedule should follow dispatch: full bids when someone answers and a truck can roll, lower or paused when not.
- A management report for towing ends in completed tows and cost per completed tow by service.
Google Ads management for a towing company means running campaigns that ring your dispatch phone the minute a driver is stranded, in an account in your name, and proving it with completed tows rather than clicks. We set the account up around how your trucks and dispatcher actually work, run it every week and report what it put on your trucks.
What management includes
- An account in your name. Your business owns the Google Ads account and pays Google directly. We work in it as users.
- Campaigns split by job. Urgent tows, accidents and roadside calls run on call-first ads. Long-distance and heavy-duty work runs on ads that lead to a quote page.
- Keywords in caller language, with a towing negative list. Tow rating questions, impound searches, driver jobs and equipment sales are blocked before they cost you. The towing keyword guide shows the list we start from.
- An ad schedule tied to dispatch. Full bids when a dispatcher or on-call driver answers and trucks are free, lower or paused when they are not.
- Location targeting by drive time. Built around where your trucks stage and the ETA you can promise, not a round radius on a map.
- Call tracking and completed-tow conversions. Every ad call tracked, matched to jobs in Towbook or your field service CRM, and fed back so bidding learns from paid tows (conversion measurement).
- Landing pages that work on a phone at night. Your number at the top, real trucks in the photos, the services you run and the area you cover.
- Weekly search term clean-up and one deliberate test a month, written down with what we expect it to change.
- Local Services Ads alongside, where towing is eligible in your area. LSA is becoming a Performance Max campaign type with pay-per-lead goals, and service-area businesses switch over in a later phase. After the switch, your search campaigns and your LSA leads are managed in the same Google Ads account you own (Google's transition notice).
Who owns what in a managed account
| Part | You own | We do |
|---|---|---|
| The account | Opened in your business name | Work in it as a user |
| Billing | Charged to your payment method | Recommend budgets |
| Changes | Every change visible in the account | Build, test and adjust campaigns |
| Results | History that stays with you | Report calls, booked jobs and cost per customer |
Who should own the account
You should own every part of it: the Google Ads account, the billing, the conversion data and the call-tracking numbers. For a towing company the last one matters most. Your phone number is the business. If an agency owns the tracking numbers on your ads and your site, and you leave, those numbers can go dead the same day.
The account history matters too. Every storm season teaches an account which searches turned into tows and which were junk. That learning lives in the account. If the account is the agency's, it leaves with them.
Ask whoever runs your ads today:
- Is my business the owner of the Google Ads account, or am I a user in yours?
- Whose card does Google bill?
- Who owns the call-tracking numbers on my ads and website?
- Can I see the search terms report and the conversion settings myself?
Any answer other than "you" is worth fixing before the next storm, whoever manages the account.
How we report
We report completed tows and cost per completed tow, by service and by week, from figures you can check against your own dispatch records. Every report line points to a decision.
| Report line | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Ad calls answered and missed, by hour | Whether the phone, not the ads, is losing tows |
| Qualified calls | How many callers were in your area and needed a service you run |
| Completed tows from ads | Jobs matched to your dispatch platform, not estimated |
| Cost per completed tow, by service | Which campaigns earn and which only ring |
| Search terms blocked this period | The clean-up work done, line by line |
| Next change and its date | What we will do before the next report |
Clicks and impressions are in the account if you want them. They are not what we ask you to judge us on. The cost per lead guide explains how calls are matched to tows (call tracking).
How it works
- Assess. We audit the account, the tracking and last season's search terms, and listen to a sample of ad calls to see where tows are lost.
- Prioritize. Tracking and the negative list come first, because every later decision depends on them. Then the dispatch-linked schedule and the split between urgent and planned campaigns, each with a date.
- Execute. We make the changes inside your account and show you what changed each week.
- Measure. We report completed tows and cost per tow, then set budgets and keywords before winter storms, summer heat and holiday travel peaks arrive, not after they start.
How VETS Growth Marketing helps
We run Google Ads for towing companies as scoped projects with outcomes and dates, with no long-term contract. The account, billing and tracking numbers are yours from the first day, and the report is in completed tows. Book a growth consultation and we will audit your account and give you the five changes that would put more paid tows on your trucks.
Sources
- About conversion measurement, Google Ads Help
- Set up tracking calls to a phone number on a website, Google Ads Help
- Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, Google Ads Help