Bull Electric is a Valdosta GA electrical contractor running on a $500/mo Google Ads budget. The challenge: deliver a real lead flow without burning the budget on voicemail spam, junk clicks, and the bot traffic that Google Ads accounts attract by default.
The numbers, current quarter: 10 qualified Twilio-verified calls per month at $34.82 cost-per-qualified-lead across $348/mo Google Ads spend. CTR 5.5%. 44 negative keywords. Ad schedule tightened to 6am-8pm daily. Quality Score on "electrician near me" still 1 (a landing page conversion challenge we are working on). The work that produced these results: conversion tracking rebuild, account architecture restructure, weekly audit playbook applied every Monday for 18 months.
Bull Electric came to us with a Google Ads account that was spending the budget every month but delivering nothing measurable. The previous setup had every classic problem: broken conversion tracking (no Twilio integration, so phone calls did not count), broad-match keywords burning budget on irrelevant searches, no negative keywords, ad schedule running 24 hours so calls came at 2 AM with no one to answer, single under-tested ad copy, no landing page optimization.
The business owner needed more leads. The budget was firm at $500/mo. There was no headroom to "just spend more until it works."
Installed Twilio for call tracking. Every Google Ads click that produced a phone call got a unique tracking number. Calls answered + over 60 seconds = qualified. Everything else (voicemail, sub-60-second hang-ups, robocalls) excluded. Now we measure leads that the owner can actually invoice.
Built a 36-keyword negative list at launch covering DIY queries, job-seeker queries ("how to become an electrician"), training queries, and generic info queries. Added 8 more in our first quarterly audit. Total: 44 negative keywords actively filtering the auction.
Cut overnight hours. Ads now run 6 AM to 8 PM daily, matching when the business can actually answer calls. We tested 9 PM and 10 PM extensions and pulled them back — conversion rate fell off a cliff after 8 PM. Owners are at home, not in the truck.
Restructured to one campaign per primary intent: residential service calls, commercial service calls, electrical panel work. Tight ad groups. Two responsive search ads per ad group with rotating assets. Smart Bidding (Maximize Conversions) targeting the qualified-call conversion action only.
Every Monday, the autonomous audit fires. New negative keywords. Underperforming assets paused. Search terms reviewed. Budget allocated. Tristan reviews the report in 5 minutes, approves 0-3 staged decisions, account stays optimized without becoming a time sink for the owner.
Month 1: ~3 qualified calls. Month 3: ~6. Month 6: ~8. Month 12: 10 consistent. Month 18 (current): 10-12 consistent.
What did the compounding? Three things:
"Electrician near me" has Quality Score 1 in Google's eyes. The landing page is not perfectly aligned to the query intent, and our Quality Score reflects that. We have a landing page rebuild scheduled that should lift QS to 5-6 and reduce CPC by 30-40%. That is the next compound move.
This is the honest part. SEO and PPC are never done. Even an account producing 10 qualified leads a month has room to improve. The weekly audit is the engine that finds the next optimization, every week, forever.
Tell us about the campaigns you are running. We respond within one business day with an honest assessment.
