Yearly Lead Volume

Matched in 2 Months

Ohio Pro Group reached out as their PPC contract with another agency was ending. They were disappointed with the results—only 1–8 leads per month on a $3,000 total budget. To make matters worse, the agency lacked transparency, providing no visibility into budget allocation, keyword performance, or conversion data. The ads were run inside the other agency’s account and they refused to give the client access to their account and data, even though they paid them for a full year of management.
This “gate-keeping” is unethical but what many agencies do to “hide their proprietary PPC methods,” which is usually code for, “we don’t want you to see how much of your budget goes to ads” as most companies are actually not spending enough of YOUR BUDGET… We don’t operate that way, we’re 100% transparent with your ad budget and management.

We tried manually searching over a dozen keywords like “remodeling company near me” or “flooring contractor columbus ohio” but their ads were nowhere to be found. This was extremely frustrating for the client as their business was relatively new and relied on PPC leads to continue to bring in new business.

Conversion data from old agency’s report

Ohio Pro Group’s website was underperforming as it had zero organic traffic (even though they paid for the SEO upgrade), site speed was slow, and it consisted of “stock 5-pages template” that the agency wouldn’t even update or provide access to, because it was part of their “stock template design. All of the client’s services were crammed onto a single page and when running ads, this is a HUGE NO-NO – if somebody wants to hire you for flooring for example, they don’t want to read about your painting services.

With all of these issues and the massive headache that was the old agency, OPG new it was time for change.

Old, outdate page design

Our Solution

With an urgent timeline and only ~6 weeks before their contract expired, our focus for their campaign was to switch over the website to a new, updated design and immediate start new lead generation campaigns through Google Ads. We:

• Built a new, SEO-optimized website
• Created separate landing pages for each core service
• Wrote copy focused on both SEO and conversion
• Used the client’s existing photos (advised to get custom photography that was declined – critical since remodeling is a very visual product)
• Seamlessly launched the new site with zero downtime as the previous contract ended

We concurrently built our PPC campaigns with new ad copy, headlines, and extensions to ensure we we ready once the contract ended. We then launched the new campaigns, inside the CLIENT’S Google account, targeting their primary services:

• Kitchen Remodeling
• Bathroom Remodeling
• Flooring Installation
• Painting Services

New Updated Service page design

Results

In just two months, our new campaign delivered as many leads as the previous agency generated in an entire year! The business saw such an increase in demand that they had to hire an administrative assistant to handle lead intake. 

Some metrics included

• 1773 visitors to the website in 2 months
• 4.84% click-thru-rate on the ads
• 1.7% conversion rate
• 38 total leads generated at $100/lead

We continued fine-tuning their PPC strategy using a variety of techniques:

• We added negative keywords to block irrelevant searches like
  • handymen, plumbers, electricians
  • home builders, architects, and engineers
  • fencing, roofing, decks, and more
• We refined target locations to wealthier areas of town for higher-quality clientele
• We used look-a-like audiences to target similar high-quality customers
• We continued conversion optimization testing and streamlined the company’s internal processes by changing to forms, adding calls to action, and more

Using these strategies, we were able to bring the cost per lead down 23% to under $80 per lead. Conversion rates were maintained but our click thru rates on ads declined – this was in part due to higher competition for marketing to the richer neighborhoods.

I would add that lack of professional photography (until late August) when going up against higher-end and luxury builders with hundreds of amazing photos was to the detriment of conversions as well.

Below is a sample of keywords the client received conversions for, mostly bottom-of-funnel conversion-oriented keywords with “near me” or the “city state” in the keyword as well. There were a few services with conversions they were able to capitalize on (epoxy) which were later blocked, but unfortunately sometimes keywords populate that are unexpected.

Conclusion

Overall, the client has been very pleased with their campaign and has had their best year in business to date. They were able to hire an office manager to answer phones, schedule estimates, and help streamline their processes. This full-time employee lifted many tasks off their shoulders and has been extremely beneficial to continue to grow their company. All of this couldn’t have been possible without the consistent lead flow and the work we performed in our continued partnership and Google Ad management services.