The NMC method
Three clear stages, one stage to bid on, and real job values instead of guesses.
Google Ads finds more of whatever you tell it worked. NMC sends Google Ads three clear milestones about your leads, built strictly from real outcomes rather than guessed values:
| Stage | What it tells Google Ads | Value uploaded |
|---|---|---|
| New | The ad brought someone who reached out. | None |
| Qualified | They asked for real work your business takes on. | None |
| Converted | You won the job, along with what the job was worth. | Actual job value |
Every step in your sales process maps cleanly into those three stages. Booking an estimate or sending a quote belongs in Qualified. Spam, wrong numbers, and job seekers get closed as Not a lead. New stays in Google Ads either way as a record that someone reached out, and Google Ads never bids on it.
Bid on one stage at a time
Section titled “Bid on one stage at a time”Google Ads automated bidding learns best when it optimizes toward a single stage with enough volume. NMC recommends Qualified until Google Ads has counted at least 15 Converted conversions over the last 30 days:
- Start on Qualified, which counts real requests for work and leaves out spam.
- Step down to Converted once your monthly volume supports it. The deeper the stage, the closer Google bids to real revenue.
- If your sales cycle takes many weeks from first call to closed job, staying on Qualified gives Google faster feedback while you still record Converted values for reporting.
Always enter the real job value on Converted
Section titled “Always enter the real job value on Converted”Conversion values help Google Ads only when they are accurate and vary with the
size of the job. Pick one consistent rule for your team (either booked job price
or collected invoice total) and enter a dollar value on every Converted
lead. Leaving the value blank uploads $0, which Google recommends against when
using value-based bidding.
Why NMC never uploads quote amounts
Section titled “Why NMC never uploads quote amounts”- Quotes overstate revenue. If you close one out of three quotes, uploading quote amounts tells Google Ads your campaigns generated three times more revenue than they actually did.
- Quotes reward the wrong searches. Your largest quotes often go to price shoppers gathering three bids, or to awkward jobs you priced high on purpose.
- Call values can’t be adjusted later. Google Ads does not allow retracting or editing the value of a call-from-ad conversion after upload, so an unbooked quote’s inflated dollar value stays permanently on that campaign.
- Bad signals compound quickly. Searches that produce big, unclosed quotes look like top performers, pulling budget away from searches that quietly bring steady, booked jobs. Unlearning that shift takes weeks.
Why three stages beat a complex pipeline
Section titled “Why three stages beat a complex pipeline”Google Ads only learns from updates your team actually records. Between service calls, updating New, Qualified, and Converted takes seconds. Long CRM pipelines (Quote sent, Site visit scheduled, Follow-up due) go stale as soon as the week gets busy, stranding won jobs halfway down the list where Google never hears about them. And because Google Ads bids on one stage at a time anyway, extra middle steps add zero bidding signal. Three stages kept accurate every day beat eight stages nobody updates.