Tracking before spending
Before any serious spending, every phone call from an ad or the site, every form and every booking is wired up as a conversion. Keywords then earn their budget with inquiries, not with clicks.
Google Ads Management
A marketing agency in Thunder Bay for Google Ads
Search campaigns for Thunder Bay businesses, aimed at the city and the district around it, kept free of wasted clicks, and timed to the seasons that drive demand here. Management is included in the Pro plan.
- Search campaigns
- Location settings
- Negative keywords
- Seasonal budgets
- Call and form tracking
Paid search in a regional hub
Hardly anyone in Thunder Bay, Ontario searches for “google ads thunder bay”; Google offers no suggestions for it at all. Owners type “marketing agency thunder bay” or “marketing companies thunder bay” instead, and then find that running ads well here depends more on a handful of local settings than on the size of the budget.
The first of those settings is geography. The city is the commercial and medical centre for Northwestern Ontario, and the hospital alone serves a catchment of about 250,000 people. Customers for a furnace, a lawyer or a used truck may be searching from Shuniah, Kakabeka Falls or much further along the highway. Restrict your ads to the city limits and they never see you; open them to anyone with a passing interest in Thunder Bay and you pay for clicks from people who will never visit.
The second is the calendar. Furnace and heating searches build through the autumn, snow removal and winter tires follow the first storms, and fishing charters, patios and camp sales take over once the ice goes out. Business buyers keep their own rhythm: firms supplying the region’s six operating mines and 15 exploration projects sell mostly during office hours, and searches such as “thunder bay mining show 2026” show when the sector gathers.
- About 250,000 people served by the regional hospital
- 146,862 residents of Thunder Bay District
- $700 per month on Pro, the plan that covers running your ads
Search demand
Search terms behind a Thunder Bay campaign plan
Google.ca suggestions, October 2026. Typing “google ads thunder bay” produces no suggestions whatsoever, so owners reach for agency and trade wording instead.
Search term
Intent
Why it matters
marketing agency thunder bay
Medium
How owners go looking for help with ads and marketing.
thunder bay furnace repair
Urgent
A cold house in January. Worth bidding on, evenings included.
thunder bay snow removal services
High
Climbs after the first heavy snowfall; the budget should climb with it.
thunder bay winter tires
High
A short autumn rush for tire shops and garages.
thunder bay fishing charters prices
Research
Summer planning, often from out of town, with price in mind.
thunder bay mining show 2026
Research
A gathering of buyers and suppliers, useful for timing business ads.
thunder bay mining jobs
Low
A job seeker, not a buyer. Words like jobs and salary go on the negative list.
thunder bay lawyers free consultation
High
A searcher close to booking, where ad wording must stay accurate.
Draw the boundary first, then widen it on purpose
We begin with a tight setup: ads shown to people located in the city and the nearby municipalities you serve, with negative keywords such as jobs, salary, course, diy and free loaded on day one. Once that core campaign brings in inquiries at a sensible cost, a separate campaign can reach the wider district or visitors, so its results are judged on their own.
Paid or organic
Paying per click, building rankings, or both?
Ads switch on in days and off just as fast; SEO builds slowly and lingers. Many owners here buy ads for the furnace or charter season and let organic search hold the rest of the calendar.
Google Ads
Local SEO
First inquiries
Within days, once tracking is in place
Usually after 3 to 6 months of work
What you pay for
Each click, billed to you by Google
One set monthly fee for our time
Searchers outside your area
Excluded through location settings and negatives
Handled by Ontario address and 807 signals
District customers
Reached with a radius or a list of municipalities
Reached with pages for the places you serve
Seasonal demand
Budget raised or cut within a day
Pages built well ahead of the season
When you stop
Inquiries end the same day
Visibility fades over several months
The work
How we run the account
Location by presence
Ads shown to people who are in, or regularly in, your chosen area, not to everyone who has ever shown an interest in a place called Thunder Bay.
Negatives from the start
Job seekers, students, do-it-yourselfers and bargain hunters blocked on launch day; the list grows each week as real search terms come in.
Budgets that follow the season
Spending planned around your year: heating through autumn and winter, outdoor and tourism work in summer, and the quiet months kept lean.
Schedules that match your phones
Business-to-business ads during office hours, trades offering emergency service running later, and no ads at all when nobody is there to answer.
Wording checked for your field
Copy for lawyers, insurance, mortgages, homes for sale and vehicles read against the Competition Act and whichever standards apply: the Law Society of Ontario, RIBO, FSRA, RECO or OMVIC.
Done carefully
Who pays for what
Standards we apply to every account, set out here so you can check us against them.
Your clicks are billed by Google, straight to you. Spend more or less with them and our fee does not budge.
We open the ad account under your company, with you as administrator from the first login. Running it is included in Pro, $700 a month in CAD, month to month; the ad budget itself travels from you to Google. Should you move on, the account, the conversion history and every campaign remain in your hands.
Ask us about your business
- No fee worked out as a share of your spend.
- Your own login to the ad account is never removed.
- No accepting every automated suggestion Google makes.
- Ads on your own business name only when there is a clear case.
How we work
Four steps, in plain order
From a first look at your listing to a short monthly report you can read over coffee.
-
01
Look first
We study your site and Business Profile, then test where you surface from several corners of Thunder Bay.
-
02
Choose the searches
Together we settle on the searches that matter and tie each to one page or one listing change.
-
03
Do the work
Profile, site, content and directory fixes, beginning with whatever should shift results soonest.
-
04
Report and adjust
Each month you see the calls, messages and positions we tracked, plus what we will tackle next.
Questions
Google Ads questions from Thunder Bay owners
Can we stop people outside our area from clicking our ads?
Mostly, yes. Location targeting limits ads to people physically in, or routinely in, the areas you pick, and a negative list blocks searches that will never turn into work. Each week we scan the actual search terms and add anything new that wandered in.
Should our ads reach people outside the city?
Often, yes. Thunder Bay serves a wide district, and many customers live in Shuniah, Oliver Paipoonge, Neebing or further out. We set a radius or list the municipalities you actually serve, and keep anything wider in a separate campaign so its cost is easy to see.
Do the click costs come out of your fee?
No. Account management comes with Pro, which is $700 a month in CAD. Google charges the clicks to your card directly; that money never passes through us.
We sell to mines and contractors. Can Google Ads work for us?
It can, provided the keywords are specific and the ads run while buyers are at work. Precise product and service terms during office hours usually do far better than broad words around the clock. A few good leads matter more than a pile of clicks.
Our busy season is short. Is it still worth advertising?
Ads suit short seasons because they can start and stop quickly. We build the campaign a few weeks ahead, raise the budget as searches grow, and pause it or scale it back when the season winds down.
Is there a minimum term?
Nothing past the current month. Even so, give a new account two or three months; early on, the job is sorting the searches that ring your phone from the ones that only cost money.
Further reading
Related articles
More on this topic, written for business owners in Thunder Bay.
Related services
Any of these can be taken on its own; many clients begin with just one.
Industries that use this service
Every trade is searched in its own way here, so every page is researched separately.
How does Thunder Bay find you today?
Ask for a free audit: where you show up on the north side and the south side, who sits ahead of you, and which fixes to make first.
Ask for my free audit