Paid ads

How to advertise your business online in South Africa

15 October 2026

Each of these does a different job, and the order you start them in matters. Set them up loosely and you pay for clicks from people who were never going to book you.

The options side by side

Google Business Profile: get on the map first

When you add and verify a Business Profile, customers can find your business on Google Search and Maps. You add it at business.google.com/add, or claim the listing if Google already has one for you, and then verify it. If somebody else has already verified it, you can ask them for ownership.

You don't need a shop or an office. If you go out to your customers, Google's guidelines let you run it as a service-area profile and keep your home address off it. Set the areas you actually work, pick the category that says what you do, list your services and add photos of your own jobs. Do you still need a website if you have a Google Business Profile? covers what the profile can't do on its own, and why it's worth having both.

You can't buy your way up the map: Google says there's no way to pay for a better local ranking. Reviews and a complete profile are what you can work on.

Google Ads: be there when someone searches for the job

Google search ads show when someone types what you do, like "geyser burst Centurion" or "electrician Durbanville". With cost-per-click bidding, you pay for each click, so the settings that keep your ads away from the wrong people matter.

Get these settings right for a trade:

1. Where the ads show. Location targeting can be set to towns, regions or a radius around a point. Google recommends its broader option on Search, which also reaches people who've shown interest in those places. If you only work in your own areas, Google says to consider "Presence" targeting instead, so the ads go to people in the places you chose rather than people elsewhere who are interested in them.
2. Which searches you pay for. The search terms report shows the actual searches your ads appeared for. Google's advice is to look for searches that are close to your keywords but come from people wanting something else. For a plumber, that might be people looking for plumbing jobs or plumbing courses. Add words like those as negative keywords, which exclude those searches from your campaign.
3. Where the click lands. Send each ad to a page about that job, with your number at the top and a quote form, not to your home page.

If you've read American advice, you may have come across Google's Local Services Ads. South Africa isn't on Google's list of countries for them, so here that job is done with search ads, a well-kept Business Profile and reviews.

Google Ads vs Facebook ads for South African trades covers what pushes the cost of a click up or down.

Meta ads reach people who aren't looking yet

Meta ads reach people before they've started looking. A before-and-after photo of a re-roof in their suburb can stop somebody scrolling who wasn't thinking about their roof at all. Meta's ads can run on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Boosting a post isn't the same as building an ad in Ads Manager. Meta describes a boosted post as an ad made from something you've already posted, with fewer customisation and targeting options than an ad built in Ads Manager. Boosting focuses on website clicks, Page engagement and local business promotions. Ads Manager lets you choose objectives such as leads.

If your customers would rather message than fill in a form, you can make a Facebook or Instagram ad that opens a WhatsApp chat with your business. Whichever you use, keep the audience to the areas you work, and reply quickly, because somebody who tapped an ad between videos may not have been thinking about the job for long.

SEO gets you found without paying per click

SEO is the work that gets your website and Business Profile into Google's normal results and the map. Google says advertising with it won't have any effect on how you appear there, and that it never accepts money to rank sites. So there's no shortcut through the ad account.

For a trade, the work is a page for each service and area you cover, a Business Profile kept up to date, reviews, and a site that loads properly on a phone. It's the slow lever. Start it while ads keep the diary full, and SEO or Google Ads first? helps you decide which comes first for your business.

Directory listings: the same details everywhere

Google isn't the only place people look. Bing has its own business listing, Bing Places for Business, which you can claim, and there are local directories and trade listing sites too. To find the ones worth your time, search Google for your trade and your town, and see which directory pages come up.

The rule for all of them is the same: your business name, phone number and the areas you work, written exactly as they are on your Business Profile and your website. Be careful with quote sites that pass the same enquiry to other businesses as well as you. Exclusive vs shared leads explains what that does to your chances of winning the job.

How to choose where to start

Answer these in order:

1. Do people already search for what you do? Think about whether your customers type the job into Google when they need it, the way somebody with a burst geyser might. If they do, start with your Business Profile and Google search ads. If they don't yet, Meta ads come first, because you have to put the idea in front of people.
2. Do you need work this month, or steadier work later? Ads can start as soon as they're approved. SEO is slower to get going.
3. Will your website turn a visit into a call? Pull it up on your phone, go to the page an ad would send people to, and see whether you can ring the business straight from it. If you can't, fix the website before you pay for clicks.
4. Can you get back to every enquiry quickly? If not, sort that out before you pay for any of this.
5. Will you know which advert brought each job? Ask every new customer where they found you, and write it down. In Google Ads, call reporting lets you count calls from your ads as conversions, and it works in South Africa.

How Peak Leads runs it

We build and run Google Ads and Meta ads for South African service businesses. On Google Ads, we build the campaigns around the jobs you actually want, send the clicks to landing pages made to turn them into calls, and track each enquiry from the first click to the booked call, phone calls included. Business Profile work sits inside our SEO.

What you should spend depends on your trade, the areas you work and what a job is worth to you, which is why we work it out on the call rather than guessing on a web page.

If you're not sure paid ads are the right first spend, book a call and we'll tell you straight.