Achievements
Sound Familiar?
He was hungry to grow the business but didn’t know what he was doing with Google Ads, just throwing $$ in and stabbing in the dark.
Calls were coming through, but he didn’t know where from. He saw clicks happening and thought that was good. On the surface, the Google Ads looked like they were doing… something.
But there was no tracking set up. No way to see which calls came from the ads and which didn’t. No idea of cost of a lead. No data to make decisions with.
The campaigns had been built to chase clicks, not to win jobs. Every service was lumped together with no separation. The card was being debited every month but the honest answer to “is this working?” was: no idea.
“I know I’m coming up in front in my head, just not sure of exact amount.” Steve McGlinn, before proper tracking was in place |
If you’re running Google Ads yourself right now and that feeling sounds familiar, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common situations we see with local service businesses. The ads might seem to be working. Or you might be burning money quietly every month. Without the right setup, there’s simply no way to tell more than gut feel.
Who are they?
Golden Trauma Specialists
Steve McGlinn runs a specialist emergency cleaning and restoration business in Perth. Flood damage, mould remediation, trauma and biohazard cleaning, fire and smoke damage, sewage contamination – the cleaning jobs nobody else wants to do.
Individual jobs range from around $1,000 to well over $20,000. Alongside the trauma business, Steve also ran a separate carpet cleaning operation.
He had been managing his own Google Ads after taking them over from an interstate web developer. He believed they were setup up ok. He just had no way to know for sure.
What We Did
Fix the foundation, then drive consistent results.
Before touching anything else, we installed proper conversion tracking. For the first time, Steve could see exactly which calls and form submissions were coming from the ads and what each one was costing him.
We restructured the campaigns so each service ran separately. Flood, mould, trauma, biohazard – each with its own campaign. Budget could go where it was performing and be pulled from where it wasn’t.
Keywords were tightened, irrelevant searches were cut out with an expanded negative keyword list, and geo targeting was adjusted so ads only showed to people Steve could actually service.
The optimisation goal shifted entirely from clicks to enquiries. And monthly reporting meant Steve always knew exactly where things stood.
The Results
Record weeks. And a business decision nobody expected.
Higher-value jobs started coming through more consistently. Flood, mould and trauma work in the $8,000 to $15,000 range, attributed directly to the ads. Revenue weeks that hadn’t happened before.
“Last week I did $15-18k in jobs, roughly half was a BNI job, rest were your ads. I think the ads are working better than ever.” Steve McGlinn, February |
Steve voluntarily increased his ad spend two to three times over. Not because we pushed him to. Because the return made it an easy decision.
And then came the decision that says everything about how much had changed.
“Because of you, my carpet cleaning business is essentially on hold, no longer taking bookings, the trauma business is busier than ever and currently doing very well. I wish I signed up with you 12 months ago!” Steve McGlinn, March |
Steve didn’t shut down his carpet cleaning business because it failed. He shut it down because the higher-value work had become so consistent, and so much more profitable, that splitting his focus no longer made sense.
If you’re running Google Ads and still not sure whether they’re actually working,
that’s the problem we help you to fix.