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Cut cost per qualified call by 46% without adding a dollar of ad spend

A broad-match Google Ads account bleeding budget on DIY searches, rebuilt around commercial intent and call tracking.

Google AdsLanding PagesReview Management

Cost per qualified call: −46%; $88 → $47
Booked jobs per month: +61%; 34 → 55
Monthly ad spend: No change; $2,400 → $2,400
Wasted spend removed: Eliminated; $740/mo → $0

Client

Regional HVAC Contractor

Location

Secondary market, Canada

Plan

Scale

Duration

9 months

The challenge

The account had been running for three years, originally set up by a previous agency and left largely untouched. Every campaign used broad match keywords with a negative list of eleven terms.

The search terms report told the story immediately: a significant share of spend was going to queries like “how to fix furnace myself”, “hvac technician jobs” and searches from towns well outside the service area.

Conversion tracking existed but counted any visit to the contact page as a conversion. Google was therefore optimising for people who looked at a page, not people who called.

What we did

1
Rebuilt the account structure
Campaigns split by service line — furnace repair, AC installation, maintenance plans — with tightly themed ad groups on exact and phrase match. Broad match was reserved for a single controlled discovery campaign with a low budget cap.
2
Fixed conversion tracking
Form submissions and phone calls tracked as separate conversion actions, with a 45-second minimum call duration so misdials and wrong numbers stopped counting as wins.
3
Aggressive negative keyword work
Over 400 negatives added in the first month, then a weekly search-term review that continues to this day. This single ongoing task accounted for most of the efficiency gain.
4
Dedicated landing pages
Each service line got its own page matching the ad copy, with a tappable phone number at the top and a three-field form above the fold. Mobile load time came in at 1.4 seconds.
5
Review generation
An SMS review request fired two hours after each completed job, lifting the Google rating and improving ad click-through as the star rating appeared alongside listings.

The outcome

Within 60 days, cost per qualified call had fallen from $88 to $61. By month six it stabilised around $47 and has held there since.

Because the budget stayed flat at $2,400/mo, the entire gain came from eliminating waste rather than spending more. Booked jobs rose 61% on identical spend.

The business added two technicians in month seven to handle the volume, which is the constraint we now plan capacity around.

“The first month's report showed us exactly where three years of budget had been going. It was uncomfortable reading and it was worth every minute.”

Placeholder Name · Owner, HVAC contractor

Illustrative example. This case study is a composite written to demonstrate our method and reporting. It does not describe a specific named client, and past performance is not a guarantee of future results.