Same budget. More clients.
Five accounts, audited from raw Google Ads API data, fixed in a deliberate order, and measured against a baseline we never overwrite. Every number here is a booked consult, a form lead or a phone call.
Five accounts. One method.
Tracking first, then wasted spend, then structure, then budget. We count booked consults, form leads and phone calls. We never report Google's inflated “all conversions” number.
- 01 Gold & Coin Buyer $47 $30 cost per lead Cost per lead on the same budget. Leads up 57%.
- 02 Divorce Mediator $66 $44 cost per lead Cost per lead in the first four weeks after a full rebuild. Same budget.
- 03 Family Law Firm $72 $56 cost per lead Phone leads restored. Custody campaign at $34 per lead, its best month on record.
- 04 Family Dental Practice C$22 per lead, top new-patient keyword Dormant brand campaign revived. Top new-patient keyword at C$22 per lead. In progress · restructured Aug 24
- 05 Office Furniture Dealer $46 per lead, liquidator searches Found a negative keyword blocking one of the account's best search terms. Budget scaled 50%. Growth phase
Gold & Coin Buyer
What we found
Half the budget was riding on one keyword with a Quality Score of 3. Searchers were looking for a “coin shop” or “coin dealer” while the ad only talked about selling coins.
What we did
We built a dedicated Coin Shop & Dealer ad group, rewrote the landing page to match, and routed that traffic to it.
- Spend −1%$997Before · Jul 12 to Aug 10 $983After · Aug 11 to Sep 9
- Leads (calls + forms) +57%21Before · Jul 12 to Aug 10 33After · Aug 11 to Sep 9
- Cost per lead −36%$47Before · Jul 12 to Aug 10 $30After · Aug 11 to Sep 9
- Coin segment cost per lead −57%$40Before · Jul 12 to Aug 10 $17After · Aug 11 to Sep 9
Divorce Mediator
What we found
The account had one ad group, one ad, 14 broad keywords, zero negative keywords and zero ad extensions. A third of visible spend was going to free-lawyer seekers, rival mediators and job hunters.
What we did
We rebuilt it with 6 themed ad groups, 53 targeted keywords, 6 credential-led ads, 11 extensions, and a 222-term negative list simulated against 3,700 real search terms before it went live. We also paused an ad group that converted well but positioned a neutral mediator as one spouse's advocate, which can conflict a mediator out of the very cases it generated.
- Cost per lead −33%$66Baseline · 225 days $44First 4 weeks after rebuild
- Conversion rate +20%8.5%Baseline · 225 days 10.2%First 4 weeks after rebuild
- Share of spend on off-target searches −52%46%Baseline · 225 days 22%22% in week one, $0 by late August
Family Law Firm
What we found
The audit found the phone channel had been silently switched off since May: no call button on the live campaigns and calls removed from the bidding signal, so phone leads fell from 29 in April to 4 in July. Google was also substituting its own landing pages (135 clicks to a blog post, zero consults), 78% of visible search spend was going to terms that never converted, and the firm was paying non-brand prices for searches on its own name.
What we did
We restored call tracking and the call button, added sitelinks, callouts and snippets, added a second ad per group, locked the landing pages, deployed over 170 negative keywords in three simulated waves, and built a dedicated brand campaign.
- Cost per lead (consults + calls) −22%$72July $56After changes · Aug 17 to 31
- Phone leads in the month +150%4July 10After changes · Aug 17 to 31
- Custody campaign cost per lead—July $34After changes · Aug 17 to 31
- Custody impressions lost to Ad Rank −26%70%July 52%After changes · Aug 17 to 31
Family Dental Practice
What we found
The brand campaign had been silently not serving for 11 weeks because its bid ceiling was set at $3 against a going click price near $5. The ads made no mention of the practice's 5.0 Google rating with 100+ reviews, Canadian Dental Care Plan acceptance, direct billing or Mandarin-speaking staff. Emergency ads landed on the homepage instead of the emergency page, the call button ran around the clock including the two days the clinic is closed, and $2,100 of $3,200 in visible non-brand spend over 90 days went to searches that never converted.
What we did
We built 6 themed ad groups pointed at matching pages, wrote 5 new ads carrying the proof points, revived the brand campaign and split it from non-brand, scheduled the call button to clinic hours, and added out-of-area and competitor negatives.
- Cost per lead by landing page −28%C$109Homepage C$78New-patient page
Figures in Canadian dollars. Two weeks in; full four-week read on Sep 21.
Office Furniture Dealer
What we found
The account was losing about 30% of available impressions to budget at roughly $100 per lead, and had been blocking one of its own best search terms since June: a negative keyword on “office liquidators” plus the city name, a sell-side query that had produced leads at $111 each. We also verified that a January account hijack ($852 in fraudulent spend) was fully cleaned up and that every live ad points at the client's own site.
What we did
With the client's approval we raised budgets from $33 to $50 a day per campaign, removed the blocking negative, mirrored 45 junk-removal negatives from one market to the other, and blocked competitor-name searches.
- Daily budget per campaign +52%$33Before $50After · with client approval
Efficiency read on Sep 17, once the higher budget has four full weeks.
What a dollar of spend brings back.
None of these clients currently reports closed-client data back into Google Ads, so most close rates and client values are estimates. The mediator's close rate is client-reported. Where a client publishes pricing we used it; otherwise we used conservative industry norms.
- Gold & Coin Buyer20× est. ROAS33leads a month 13est. new clients at 40% close $1,500est. revenue per client
- Divorce Mediator13× est. ROAS22leads a month 8.8est. new clients at 40% close $1,500est. revenue per client
- Family Law Firm16× est. ROAS32leads a month 6.4est. new clients at 20% close $5,000est. revenue per client
- Family Dental Practice CAD19× est. ROAS31leads a month 15.5est. new clients at 50% close C$2,500est. revenue per client
- Office Furniture Dealer8× est. ROAS21leads a month 4.2est. new clients at 20% close $6,000est. revenue per client
- Gold & Coin Buyer 2% break-even 40% est.
- Divorce Mediator 3% break-even 40% reported
- Family Law Firm 1.3% break-even 20% est.
- Family Dental Practice 2.6% break-even 50% est.
- Office Furniture Dealer 2.4% break-even 20% est.
Even if only one lead in fifty closes, every account here is still ahead of its ad bill.
| Client | Cost per lead | Close rate | Est. revenue per client | Monthly spend | Leads | Est. revenue returned | Est. ROAS | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold & Coin Buyer | $30 | 40% est. | $1,500 | $983 | 33 | $19,800 | 20x | 2% |
| Divorce Mediator | $44 | 40% reported | $1,500 | $1,000 | 22 | $13,200 | 13x | 3% |
| Family Law Firm | $63 | 20% est. | $5,000 | $2,027 | 32 | $32,000 | 16x | 1.3% |
| Family Dental PracticeCAD | C$65 | 50% est. | C$2,500 | C$2,020 | 31 | C$38,750 | 19x | 2.6% |
| Office Furniture Dealer | $145 | 20% est. | $6,000 | $3,100 | 21 | $25,200 | 8x | 2.4% |
How each estimate was built
Gold & Coin Buyer $30 per lead · 40% close est. · $1,500 per client
A lead is a call or form from someone with metal to sell. We assume 40% walk in and sell. Revenue is what the shop resells the metal for; we assume a $1,200 average transaction and that a quarter of customers return, giving $1,500 lifetime revenue per customer.
Divorce Mediator $44 per lead · 40% close reported · $1,500 per client
The client reports that about half of their leads become paying clients; we use 40% to stay conservative. Published rates are $245 to $285 per hour with a two-hour minimum per session. Six hours at $245 is $1,470, rounded to $1,500 per case. Our original audit put break-even at a 12% close rate when leads cost $173. At $44 per lead it is 3%.
Family Law Firm $63 per lead · 20% close est. · $5,000 per client
The firm's site publishes mediation at $3,000 to $7,000 per case and custody matters from $5,000 to $25,000 and up. We use $5,000, the bottom of both ranges, and assume 20% of booked consults and calls retain the firm. Spend and leads are August actuals.
Family Dental Practice C$65 per lead · 50% close est. · C$2,500 per client
A lead is a new-patient form or call. We assume half become patients. $2,500 CAD is a conservative three-year patient value covering the first visit, routine hygiene and some treatment. On first-year value alone, about $900, the return is still roughly 7x.
Office Furniture Dealer $145 per lead · 20% close est. · $6,000 per client
Leads are business inquiries for used furniture, cubicles and liquidations. We assume a 20% close rate and a $6,000 average order. The table uses the current growth-phase cost per lead of $145. At the pre-raise $104 per lead the return is about 11x.
These estimates become actuals once closed-client revenue is fed back into Google Ads. We already run that pipeline on our own account, where every qualified lead and closed sale is uploaded daily, and it can be set up for any client that tracks leads in a CRM.
Fixed in a deliberate order.
The same sequence on every account, so the first month's numbers are real and the next month's are comparable.
- 1 Tracking Every call, form and booking is counted before anything else is touched. Phone channels silently switched off get found here.
- 2 Wasted spend Cut the searches that never convert. Negatives are simulated against the account's real history so we know what they would have blocked.
- 3 Structure Themed ad groups, landing pages that match the search, ads that carry the proof points searchers are looking for.
- 4 Budget Only once efficiency is proven do we scale spend, with the client's approval and a dated read scheduled in advance.
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