V'NIA
For confidentiality reasons, we can't share this client's name. The results and figures below are real.
From broad clicks to buyer leads: lead rate up from 2.80% to 4.55%.
The company is a laundry company that sells commercial laundry machines and runs vended laundry for residential buildings. Its website draws 44,000 to 60,000 users a month, but most are residents reloading laundry cards or booking service, not buyers. Google Ads had to find the few people shopping for commercial washers and dryers.
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Book a strategy call →Loose targeting, brand ads that didn't convert, and miscounted leads.
From April to July the whole keyword budget went on broad match, showing ads on loosely related searches. Ads on the company name took 673 clicks to produce a single lead. And Free Quote requests were being recorded as Vended Laundry enquiries, which blurred which campaigns were working.
- 01
Built in parallel
Aug 7: new ad groups, each around one theme, were prepared while the old ones kept running, so leads kept coming during the build.
- 02
Set a cost target and tested brand ads
Aug 10–Sep 6: budget raised with a first target of $72 per lead. Brand ads ran as a test and were paused after bringing just 1 lead.
- 03
Switched to buyer searches
Sep 8: themed ad groups went live on phrase match keywords like "laundromat machines for sale". Ads sent buyers to the Machine Sales page, Vended Laundry moved to its own campaign, and the target was set at $80.
- 04
Scaled what worked
Sep 22–27: as Machine Sales beat its target, its budget was raised, then trimmed on Oct 6 to keep October on plan.
- 05
Fixed measurement
Oct 1–11: the Free Quote tracking fix was confirmed and searches that didn't fit the business were blocked.
Every click more likely to become a lead.
Machine Sales, which brings almost every lead, stayed close to its $80 target. Since Sep 8, 3 of 5 weeks came in under $80 and one more within $1 of it. All figures are in Canadian dollars.
$41 at its best, after the Sep 8 switch to buyer keywords
Grey: old broad-match setup. Blue: buyer keywords. Dashed line: the $80 target.
| Measure | August | Oct 1–11 |
|---|---|---|
| Budget on broad match | 91% | 0% |
| Lead rate (leads / clicks) | 2.80% | 4.55% |
| Machine Sales cost per lead | $76 | $74 |
| Website engagement rate | 37.1% | 44.3% |
Lead rate was 3.66% in September. Pausing brand ads was a big part of the rise; Machine Sales held steady at about 1 lead per 20 clicks.
What didn't work, and how we handled it
October's account-wide $104 per lead hides a strong core: without the Vended Laundry campaign, which brought no October leads, it would be $74. Clicks fell from 1,141 to 819 and cost per click rose from $2.19 to $2.92, the expected trade for dropping cheap, loosely related traffic. The switch-over week, Aug 31–Sep 6, cost $184 per lead on 3 leads.
Tighter targeting brings fewer clicks, but more of them turn into enquiries.
The company now pays for searches from people shopping for machines, not people who happen to type nearby words.
- Grow Machine Sales in 20% stepsOnly while its cost per lead stays under the $80 target.
- Settle Vended LaundryKeep it separate, or move its best searches into Machine Sales.
- Add a tap-to-call numberSo phone enquiries count as leads too.
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