Most contractors who call us about Local Services Ads describe the same thing. The phone rang constantly for a few weeks, then it slowed down, and nothing about the budget changed.
The usual cause is not the budget. It is answer rate.
Google ranks you on whether you pick up
Local Services Ads decide who shows up using a small number of inputs: your review score and review count, how responsive you are to leads, how complete your profile is, how close you are to the person searching, and your budget.
Responsiveness is the one most businesses do not realize is being measured. When a lead calls through your ad and nobody answers, Google reads that as a bad experience for the searcher. Show enough of those, and it starts showing the competitor who does answer.
This is why LSA punishes exactly the businesses that are busiest. Two trucks, both crews under a house at two in the afternoon, nobody at the desk. The work is going well and the ranking is quietly sliding.
What actually fixes it
Answer the phone, or have someone who does. An answering service that takes a real message beats voicemail. Voicemail counts as a miss.
Review your leads every week. Google credits invalid leads, and the process is now largely automated based on the call recording and message content. Most advertisers never bother. That is money sitting on the table every month.
Keep reviews moving. Review score is the heaviest input in the ranking. The informal bar among serious competitors is a 4.8 average, and recency matters, so a systematic request after every completed job is worth more than any bid change you can make.
The uncomfortable part
If your operation genuinely cannot answer calls during business hours, Local Services Ads is not the right channel yet. Search ads let you send people to a form and follow up on your own schedule. LSA is a phone product, and it rewards the businesses that treat it like one.
We would rather tell you that before you spend the money than after.