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Four accounts, with the starting numbers
A booked job means a job in the diary with an address, counted by the client's own office. Not a form fill, not a phone click. Every number below has a starting point and a period, because a percentage on its own tells you nothing.
Each one also says what else was happening, since a new truck or a wet January moves these numbers as much as we do. The last one is an account we got wrong, with the numbers.
Case 01: Moving, Toronto
Advance Moving
Two trucks in October 2024. Eight today, 26 months in.
The situation
Two trucks, a good local reputation, and an agency running one broad-match campaign with a Performance Max campaign on top. Long distance and local moves shared the same budget.
What was actually broken
Performance Max was 61% of spend, and most of its reported conversions were phone clicks on the careers page. Broad match was buying searches for junk removal and storage units.
What we changed
Performance Max off on day one. Four campaigns: local, long distance, packing and materials, storage. Their own name as exact match for pennies. Call recording on every number.
What else was happening
They put a third truck on in April and hired an office manager who answers from 7am. Both matter. We would put the account at roughly two thirds of the change.
What we would do differently
We left the old Performance Max campaign running three weeks alongside the rebuild to be safe. It cost about $1,900 and taught us nothing.
Case 02: Restoration, four trucks
Cakewalk Restore
Water, fire and smoke work, run off the phone.
The situation
Four trucks, decent adjuster relationships, and an account left on autopilot for eleven months by the previous agency.
What was actually broken
The phone. In month one we changed nothing except turning call recording on. 41% of calls between 6pm and 7am went to voicemail, and those are the twenty-thousand-dollar jobs.
What we changed
Showed the owner the recordings. He put an answering service on at $310 a month. Then bids followed the new answer rate, with emergency water and fire split out from planned work.
What else was happening
A wet December, and a storm week in mid-January that put nine jobs in the diary in five days. Take that week out and month 6 is 21 jobs, not 26.
What we would do differently
Nothing in the account, but we should have asked what happens to a call at midnight in the first fifteen minutes of the first conversation.
Case 03: Cleaning, Nashville
Nashville Steam Cleaning
Residential rounds and commercial contracts, booked off the phone.
The situation
One campaign covering everything from a single oven clean to a recurring office contract, with the same bids on both.
What was actually broken
Recurring work, worth thousands a year, was competing for budget with two-hundred-dollar one-offs. Nobody could say what a booked round cost to win.
What we changed
Split recurring and one-off into separate campaigns with separate budgets, capped the one-offs, and moved commercial onto business hours with its own page.
What else was happening
They took on two extra cleaners in March, which is part of why the round count could grow at all. Without the hire this is a smaller number.
What we would do differently
We should have asked for their retention figures in week one. It turned out the one-off customers almost never came back, which made the split obvious.
The one we
got wrong
Case 04: Mould and damp specialist
Four flat months, and a refunded invoice
Name withheld at their request.
The situation
A mould and damp specialist in a market with roughly 400 relevant searches a month. We had checked that number before we quoted, and took the job anyway.
What was actually broken
Nothing in the account, in the end. There was simply not enough demand for our fee to pay for itself, however well the campaigns were built.
What we changed
Tighter match types, a proper inspection page, bids off the searches that were only ever going to be homeowners looking for advice. It moved the cost per lead and not the job count.
What happened
Four flat months. We refunded the last invoice and told them to stop paying anybody, including us.
What we would do differently
We now add up searchable demand before we quote, and if our fee needs more extra booked work than the market can produce, we say no. We have turned down three companies since.
The rules behind every number on this page
Booked jobs, not leads
Counted by the client's office from their own diary, matched back to the call recording.
Always a denominator
A starting number and a period, so you can judge the size of the change yourself.
What else was happening
New trucks, new hires, storms and seasons all get named. We do not take credit for weather.
Want the same read on your own account?
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