The step between the ad and the phone
Almost nobody calls straight from an ad. They see it, then they check you — the map listing, the star rating, the two most recent reviews. That check happens in about twenty seconds and it decides everything.
Which means your advertising is not competing on creative. It is competing on reputation, with your ad spend paying for the audition.
What the rating does to your cost per lead
Two businesses running identical campaigns in the same county, one at 4.7 stars with recent reviews and one at 3.9 with nothing in eighteen months, will not get the same cost per lead. The gap is often large.
Below roughly 4.2 stars, a meaningful share of local buyers filter you out before considering price. You are still paying for the impression and the click.
Recency beats volume
Three hundred reviews with the newest from two years ago reads worse than forty with one from last week. Buyers treat old reviews as evidence about a business that may no longer exist in that form.
A steady trickle — a handful a month, forever — outperforms a one-time campaign to collect a hundred.
The unglamorous system that works
Ask every satisfied customer, at the moment the work is finished and they are happy, by text with a direct link. Not later, not by email, not a QR code on an invoice.
Reply to every review, especially the bad ones, in a way a future customer will read approvingly. And put the rating in the ad copy — it is the strongest short line of proof you have.