From burning budget to 4.6x return: rebuilding Summit's ad engine.

The challenge

Summit came to us after two agencies and eighteen months of expensive disappointment. The account had one campaign targeting every service in every suburb, no negative keywords, and conversion tracking that counted every phone call — including spam — as a win. Ads pointed at a slow homepage that never mentioned the emergency services people were searching for. They were visible, busy, and losing money on marketing.

What we did

We stopped the spend for two weeks and rebuilt the foundation: call tracking that distinguishes booked jobs from wrong numbers, campaigns split by service and urgency, and a negative-keyword list built from six months of wasted search terms. Every campaign got its own fast landing page that kept the ad's promise — emergency searches landed on an emergency page with a tap-to-call button, not a homepage tour. Then we turned spend back on, low, and scaled only what proved profitable.

The results

Within one quarter the account reached a 4.6x return on ad spend with cost per qualified lead down 38%. Just as important: Summit's owner can now open a one-page report and see exactly what was spent, what was earned, and which services are worth scaling next season. The budget didn't grow — the waste left.